❤️ 5 Google Slides templates I love

🎙 Want me to speak at your school or event?

As a subscriber to this newsletter, you know I’m full of practical teaching ideas you can use in class tomorrow.

What if professional development was like these email newsletters? Fun? Hands-on? With lots of practical application in the classroom?

Bring me to your school or event for …

• Full-day workshops. I can present a full day for your staff on fun student engagement with technology — or artificial intelligence — with lots of hands-on activities and ideas for class tomorrow.

• Keynote speeches. My three keynote speeches are super relevant to classrooms today. They’ll make you laugh. Make you think. And change how we think about teaching right away.

• Breakout sessions. I have dozens of practical sessions for a conference or conference-style professional development day to empower teachers with practical strategies.

“He received rave reviews from our participants.” — Event organizer, New Mexico

“Matt is one of the most down to Earth, easy to work with speakers I have ever worked with.” — Director of Professional Learning, Illinois

“He was entertaining and we learned a lot. I would definitely have him present to our teachers again.” — Curriculum director

“His positive attitude was contagious.” — Conference organizer, Mississippi

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🗄 5 templates I love (Google Slides / PowerPoint)

I absolutely love a good template.

“Template” = pre-made file you can copy, adjust as necessary, and assign to your students

When you find the right template, it can save you tons of time — and spark creativity in your lessons.

But you don’t want to spend a ton of cash on Teachers Pay Teachers for them, right?

Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.

Our template library is packed full of templates (no, we don’t charge a penny for them!). Most are Google Slides and PowerPoint, but you’ll find others, too.

❤️ Here are five templates I love (with links to make a copy or download).

1. Amazon home page template 🛒

You know how Amazon suggests items to us on our home page based on what we buy and like, right? (Yaaaay for impulse buys!)

This template lets you create the homepage that Amazon would suggest — based on personal recommendations — for …

• a character in a novel (Juliet in Romeo and Juliet)

• someone in history (Che Guevara)

• the perfect science lab partner

• a healthy lifestyle

• yourself or a classmate (the example above is about me!)

Get the Amazon home page template here

2 . Top 3 graphic organizer 🏆

Ranking things involves higher-order thinking — especially when you have to justify your rankings.

Have students do a simple top 3 ranking for …

• favorite characters in a story

• most important historical innovations

• characteristics of great writing

• their favorite works of art in art class

• most important events that have happened to them

Get the top 3 graphic organizer here

3. Now, Then, Way Back template 💭

Want your students form better long-term memory? Let’s use the concept of spaced retrieval from cognitive science.

As a bell-ringer (beginning of class) or exit ticket (end of class), ask them to recall three details/items/concepts about …

• something you’re studying today or this week (now)

• something you studied in the last few weeks or month (then)

• something you studied a long time ago (way back)

Make a habit of this and your students will remember much more!

Get the Now, Then, Way Back template here

4. Be the Bot template 🤖

This is a quick, fun, and easy way to bring artificial intelligence into learning.

Ask students a question about something you’ve been studying — ideally, something they’ll need to rank or list or prioritize.

Tell them you’re going to ask an AI assistant (“the bot” … like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, etc.) the answer … but you want them to predict what the AI will say (and how it’ll rank them).

Let them discuss in pairs or small groups. Then, enter the prompt (question) into your AI assistant.

Students analyze the AI response (right? wrong? missing pieces? accurate descriptions? solid logic?).

Get the Be the Bot template here

5 . Yelp review template 🍔

We count on Yelp to help us find restaurants, places to visit … even plumbers, mechanics and other service providers.

And we count on the reviews to be honest and help us make choices!

A Yelp review is a really fun format for students to show what they’ve learned about …

• a place they’re studying

• a person in history or a story

• a historic innovation

• an element on the periodic table of elements

• their project for class

Get the Yelp review template here

🗄 Want more templates? Browse the Ditch That Textbook templates library

🗄 TEMPLATE 🗄

📺 Teaching with Teachflix template bundle

Have you heard of Teachflix (teachflix.org)?

It’s our collection of 500+ free classroom videos — all teacher-approved.

• browse by grade level (elementary / middle / high school)

• browse by content area

• search with a keyword

Best of all, the videos come with student activities! The “Teaching with Teachflix” template bundle is full of student activities to do with the videos.

Netflix will charge you per month. But Teachflix? We use the teacher’s favorite price. (You know what that is.) 😉

📺 Browse Teachflix videos

📑 Get the template bundle in Google Slides / PowerPoint / PDF

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!