Free Google Slides & PowerPoint themes for teachers (plus lesson ideas and activities to use in class).
This post is by Paula Martínez, the creator of Slides Mania. Paula has a 9 to 5 job that has nothing to do with design or creativity or education! Making presentation templates has become a fun hobby that allows her to express her creativity. This led to SlidesMania being born. You can connect with Paula on Twitter at @SlidesManiaSM and subscribe to her email list at slidesmania.com to get the latest templates sent right to your inbox.
The right colors and graphics can make all the difference when creating an engaging Google Slides or PowerPoint presentation. However, sometimes creating the right theme takes time and creative energy that we don't always have.
That's why Slides Mania was created. With more than 150 free PowerPoint or Google Slides themes, you will surely find one that fits your next presentation or project.
Many of these templates fit perfectly in the lessons you already teach. Teachers from all over the world have used these themes in their classrooms in lots of creative and engaging ways.
Below you will find free downloadable themes for both Google Slides or PowerPoint plus ideas for using them in the classroom with your students.
Here are 20 FREE Google Slides templates and PowerPoint themes plus activity ideas and resources to get started ...
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This is a different type of template with customizable desktop organizer wallpapers.
If you have a lot of shortcuts, files and apps in your desktop, these wallpapers are a lifesaver! You can place the icons inside each category so they are easy to find.
Lesson idea
The Desktop Organizer Wallpapers are a perfect way to display a bell ringer activity to start class. Students can also see what they are going to learn or do that day, and teachers can add special notes, such as test reminders, fun facts or even students’ birthdays.
A theme based on the bulletin board / cork board.
It features paper sheets and push pins. You can change the color of the yellow post its by editing the master, and you can also replace the red push pins with the ones included on the 19th slide.
Lesson idea
Use this bulletin board template along with “sticky notes” to brainstorm ideas for writing independently or share with others and create a collaborative brainstorming document for a group project.
Don’t ditch that idea!
Potter free presentation template for Google Slides or PowerPoint is perfect if your next lecture is about recycling ideas, or the creative process. It features crumpled paper, paper balls, lightbulbs and a paper bin / basket.
Lesson idea
The Potter template is perfect for sharing a genius hour or passion project with peers or the larger community.
I am beyond thankful to Jennifer Leban and Omar López, there was no way for me to make this template without their help. Please do follow them if you are a Twitter user!
I’ve vectorized the drawings so you can resize them without losing quality. You can choose different paper backgrounds and also change the background color behind the notepad / sketchbook.
Lesson idea
Sketchnoting, or visual note-taking, can transform doodles into a tool that helps our students deepen their understanding of a concept. It’s a fun and brain-friendly way to organize ideas visually and makes them easy to remember. Use this template on a tablet for digital sketchnotes or print it out to give students an inspiring place to take their own sketchnotes.
You can choose between landscape or portrait mode. It comes with 3 pre-design covers, but you can create your custom cover by editing the master.
Lesson idea
Interactive digital notebooks can be used in all subject areas and in almost any grade level. Use this template to give your students a blank space to get creative with their own notes. Or create and share any of the TONS of awesome multimedia activities you can do with interactive notebooks. They’re easy and free!
Ogawa is a fun theme featuring notebooks, paper, clipboards and markers.
When I was working on it, I was thinking about school assignments in a fun way. You can avoid using a blank template and use Ogawa instead. It has light colors (even though you can modify them) and flat graphics.
Lesson idea
The Ogawa theme can also work for digital note taking.
Resource: 10 tips for creating awesome diginotes with Canva (these tips apply to digital note taking with Google Slides and Powerpoint too!)
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Now that we can all finally insert audio in our Google Slides decks, you can use this fun theme in your classroom.
You can duplicate the radio slide as many times you need and change the dial position on each slide. Same goes with the iPod slides, just duplicate them and edit the text showing on them.
Lesson idea
Get students recording their own podcast with anchor or synth and share it with classmates (or beyond) in a collaborative slides project.
Katie Digital Planner was thought more as tutorial than a template, but since it was such a hit among educators, we decided to add a new one, especially for teachers and students. It’s completely customizable, you can change colors, and even the tab names by editing the master.
Lesson idea
The school planner (I’ll be updating it soon for the 2020-2021 school year) Also works for planning Ts weeks or even the year. Adding hyperlinks to the scheduled tasks make it great for getting all your resources organized.
@eduGOOGdroid from Twitter was looking for a slide deck based on Material Design and featuring Google colors. He sent us his idea, and we made this template out of it.
We have also added a hamburger menu with some hyperlinks. You can replace the icons for ones that best represent your topic and then update the links to their corresponding slides.
Lesson idea
The Mr. G can be used as a dummy Google search. Ss can pick a subject and add it to the search box, add the results in a Googly way and hyperlink those results to other slides where they can expand the information. Great for showing research skills.
Or teachers can add the subject based on a lesson that was given in the search box and let students retrieve the information as search results.
As a mom, I would love to know more about my daughter’s teachers. So why not create a newsletter using Google Slides to send out to parents? Or even use it as a way for the students to introduce themselves to you and the rest of the class.
Click on the link below to find a little tutorial on how to make a PDF newsletter. And of course, you can also download this template.
Lesson idea
The Introduce yourself template can be used by teachers for a back to school newsletter or presentation. Students can also create a newsletter for their parents, showing what they learned that week.
Beautiful letter-style template that gives a nice retro vibe. It’s perfect for any informal presentation where you can include data, information and pictures.
Lesson idea
Even in a world where texting takes over as our main source of written communication it's still very important for students to know how to write a letter. Use this template to have students practice their letter writing skills. You can sent their letter digitally or even print them out and send them through the mail!
This one is not a template, or maybe it is, it depends on how you use it. It was thought for elementary teachers for customizing drag and drop activities. Also works for a lesson about farm animals for ESL teachers.
All graphics are made from shapes and it includes a barn, trees, clouds, fences, cows, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens and chicks.
Lesson idea
The Farm Animals Shapes were specially made for elementary teachers. Perfect for basic math and for some drag and drop activities. By copying and pasting an animal as many times as needed you can prepare a slide for your students to practice math doing sums and divisions.
Resource: How to Create Drag and Drop Activities with Google Slides by Kasey Bell
Philo is a fun template to show your ideas in a retro way! Remember when you had to get up to change channels?
You can change all the colors –slides’ backgrounds and TVs’ – by going into the master slide.
Lesson idea
Use Philo, to amplify student voice, put the adapted version together with some app like Flipgrid and give each student a channel to put their voices out.
Koch is a fun template to motivate, achieving goals, conquering worlds, setting records and going beyond.
Lesson idea
Students can use the Koch template for presentations or school lessons about space, planets, astronauts, NASA missions, a spaceship launch, Apollos’ missions or the moon landing.
Russo is a fun template inspired by movie-making.
And if your presentation subject is not related to motion pictures, but you are a movie lover like us, you can go ahead and use it as well. We are sure that your audience will love it.
Lesson idea
Students can use the Russo template to showcase a video project or screencast they created individually or as a collaborative group project.
This amazing and colorful scrapbook-style template is perfect for your next project in the classroom. Kids will definitely love it. It comes with a world map and plenty of space to put fun pictures in it!
Lesson idea
This template provides students with a fun way to present information about a person or place they have researched. Or have students each take a page or two to create a class scrapbook of memories at the end of the school year.
We will be uploading different resumés templates for you to edit them with your professional information, save it to PDF and you will be ready to go. Make a great impression with the elegant designs and stand out with recruiters.
Lesson idea
Students can use the resume template to create resumes for themselves in preparation for a career after high school. Students can also create resumes for a fictional or historical character to highlight what they learned.
Introducing our set #3 of infographics for Google Slides or PowerPoint.
This time is all about charts. It includes bars, circles chart, triangles, demographics, squares.
All slides are 100% customizable, simply edit them to represent your data. You can also change all colors to match your topic or brand. Just copy the ones you like and paste them on any of our themes.
Lesson idea
Infographics are everywhere. They’re eye-catching. They summarize information succinctly.
They’re very visual, whether you’re viewing on a page or a printed version hung on a wall.
If you think about it, infographics meet many of the same goals as our students’ writing assignments.
Use this theme to give your students a template to create their own infographic on any topic in any subject.
Resource: Creating eye-popping infographics with Google Drawings (although this post focuses on Google Drawings these tips work with any tool to create infographics)
Paterson has a retro style. It mimics an old operating system, featuring windows, folders, cursors and a loading icon.
The best part of this free theme for Google Slides or PowerPoint is that you can change its accent color very easily. Simply go to Slide > Edit Master > Click on any cyan shape > Click on fill color > Click on the little pencil icon next to the word THEME > Click on Choose a theme color > Click on Accent 1 > And change it any color you like.
Lesson idea
The Patterson template is perfect for presenting information about Computer Science topics. Students can use the template when presenting their programs to peers to introduce themselves and discuss the process they went through while creating their programs.
This one is one of those special requests: Matt Meyer (an amazing 6th Grade Teacher from Illinois) asked me if I had a template inspired in Harry Potter. I didn’t, so here it is.
I know it's not pixel perfect (again, I am not a designer nor an illustrator) and when I was working on it, I thought I couldn’t make it. But I sent the first draft to Matt and he liked it! So, for me it’s mission accomplished!
Lesson idea
This template is for the Harry Potter loving students (and teachers out there!) It's just plain fun!
We would love to hear how YOU are using this template with your students! Leave a comment below or share on Twitter with the hashtags #SlidesManiac and #Ditchbook.
How can I use Slides Mania templates?
You are free to use our templates for both personal and commercial purposes.
Just keep the Credits slide or mention SlidesMania and any other resources used on the footer of a slide.
You are not allowed to:
- Sublicense, sell or rent any of SlidesMania’s templates or modified versions of them.
- Distribute SlidesMania’s presentation templates unless it has been expressly authorized by us.
- Include SlidesMania’s content in an online or offline database or file.
- Offer SlidesMania’s templates (or modified versions of them) for download.
- Acquire the copyright of any of SlidesMania’s presentation templates.
How will or how have you used these templates in the classroom? Please share with us on Twitter using the hashtags #SlidesManiac and #Ditchbook.
For notifications of new Ditch That Textbook content and helpful links:
Interested in having Matt present at your event or school? Contact him by e-mail!
Is Matt presenting near you soon? Check out his upcoming live events!
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THESE ARE AWESOME!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE!!
Glad you’re enjoying them Jeanna! 🙂
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Wow! Thank you so much from a grateful middle school teacher!
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THANK YOU SO MUCH for sharing! These are amazing for my class!
I love slidesmania. You are doing a wonderful job. I have got a question as I am not a native speaker of English and am not sure about the rules. Am I allowed to share modified versions of your presentations with students via google slides?