There are HUNDREDS of free tech resources to help music teachers plan and run exciting and engaging lessons. But, sometimes, it’s hard to track down exactly which one you need (and get it from a reliable source). We’ve taken out all of the hard work in our Ultimate Free Music Tech Resources Guide which is released every year just for music teachers!
Our brand-new 2023/24 guide is out now. You can grab your copy by clicking the button below.
Read on for a highlight of one of our favorite resources inside the Ultimate Free Music Tech Resources Guide, SlidesMania!
Written by Katrina Proctor, Content Manager at Midnight Music.
Music teaching is tough! From lesson planning to engaging students, there are a lot of responsibilities to take on, and sometimes reinventing the wheel and constantly creating new activities is VERY time-consuming!
Fortunately, there’s a website that can make teaching music much easier and more fun! SlidesMania, created by the incredible Paula, is an amazing website that provides free PowerPoint and Google Slides templates and themes for teachers to use in the classroom. But it’s more than just presentation templates. SlidesMania has dozens of templates for activities, interactive games, lesson ideas, planners, digital notebooks, choice boards, certificates, and more!
Additionally, each template includes instructions for use within the template so that you can assign the templates themselves to students with no additional work needed!
In this blog post, we’ll highlight 8 SlidesMania templates that you’ll love using with students in your music classroom.
8 awesome music classroom templates from SlidesMania
Interactive Jukebox
SlidesMania’s Interactive Jukebox template is a fun project to engage your students in music appreciation. With this free template, students can add music tracks they’ve composed or hyperlink to different YouTube videos. They also can custom-create their album art using a tool like Canva! It’s fantastic for showcasing different student compositions, highlighting some of their favorite songs, or exploring the music of a certain genre or time period!
If you would like to learn more about how to edit audio to add into projects or presentations like this, click here!
Preview the Interactive Jukebox template:
Paradise Island
If you’re looking for an engaging and interactive way to cover topics from rhythm to melody, the Paradise Island template is perfect! This template allows you to create a playable board game that students will love.
The template has different paths, each connected to a question slide, and each slide has a map image that takes you back to the main map when clicked. You can use customizable pictures as pawns by replacing the image. You can also add questions, activities, or challenges related to whatever musical topic you’re studying. This template works with both Google Slides and PowerPoint!
Preview the Paradise Island template:
Guess the Character
The Guess the Character template harkens back to the old game, ‘Guess Who,’ and it’s perfect for icebreaker activities. Students can add info and a picture about themselves, including fun facts about their lives. The template can also be used for a music-related version of the game, using names/images of different composers, instruments, and more. It’s a great way to get students acquainted with each other, music theory, or music history!
Preview the Guess the Character template:
Interactive Trivia Game
Who doesn’t love a good trivia game? SlidesMania’s Interactive Trivia Game template allows you to play Trivial Pursuit live in your music classroom. It’s a great way to test your students’ knowledge and encourage healthy competition about anything you’re studying or performing!
Preview the Interactive Trivia Game template:
Two Truths and a Lie Game Template
Looking for a way to get students to break the ice? The Two Truths and a Lie Game allows students to come up with interesting facts about themselves or music-related facts that are true or false. It’s a fun way to get to know each other and learn new things!
Preview the Two Truths and a Lie template:
Cardtegories
Looking to spice up your music classroom with some Jeopardy-style questions? Cardtegories is the perfect template for you. Just add facts and questions underneath different themed headings and let the game begin!
Preview the Cardtegories template:
Digital Lesson Planner or Digital Student Notebook
Organization is key to teaching success, and one of SlidesMania’s many digital lesson planners and digital student notebook templates make organization a breeze. These templates can help you plan your lessons or engage students in tracking their growth with organized tabs and space for entering information.
Best of all, they’re already pre-hyperlinked so all of your information is always easy to navigate through!
Here’s a preview of one of many of Paula’s lesson planners:
And here’s a preview of one of many interactive student notebooks:
Challenge Choice Board
Give students opportunities to direct their learning at the end of the year, a perfect project for a sub day, or as a reward activity with different challenges to complete with SlidesMania’s Challenge Choice Board. It’s a fun way to let students take control of their learning and engage them in creative activities.
Preview the Challenge Choice Board Template:
Final Thoughts
As music teachers, it’s our responsibility to make learning fun and engaging for our students. With SlidesMania, we can access hundreds of free templates, activities, and games to help us achieve that goal.
Whether you’re teaching rhythm or melody, music composition, or music history, SlidesMania has everything you need to make your classroom a fun and educational experience. It can even help break the ice or help you plan for your next day out of the classroom!
SlidesMania is also offered completely for free, which is SO incredible! If you find her work useful, consider donating to Paula’s Buy Me a Coffee page to keep the templates coming!
What’s your favorite template? Did we miss one? Let us know in the comments below!
About the Author
Katrina Proctor is the Content Manager at Midnight Music and is also a former music teacher from Colorado, USA. She taught middle school music for nearly 10 years in northern Colorado, where her passion is low-income students in Title 1 schools. Katrina has taught 5th-8th grade chorus, advanced-level chorus, class piano, general music, band, and orchestra. She has her Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education & Master’s Degree in Music Education-Choral Conducting from the University of Colorado at Boulder. You can connect with Katrina on Facebook or via her website, She The Teacher.
Looking for More Resources for Music Teachers?
Hello! I’m Katie Argyle – an Australian music technology trainer and consultant with a passion for helping music teachers through my business Midnight Music.
I’m a qualified teacher but no, I don’t currently teach in a school. I help teachers through my online professional development space – the Midnight Music Community – where there are tutorial videos, courses, links and downloadable resources.
I like to focus on easy ways to incorporate technology into what you are already doing in your music curriculumthrough a range of creative projects. I also run live workshops and have presented at countless conferences and other music education events.
If you want simple, effective ideas for using technology in music education, I would LOVE to help you inside the Midnight Music Membership Community.