Skip to main content

«  View All Posts

Computer Applications | Google Apps

Top 4 Google Slides Lesson Plans

November 21st, 2023 | 5 min. read

Brad Hummel

Brad Hummel

Coming from a family of educators, Brad knows both the joys and challenges of teaching well. Through his own teaching background, he’s experienced both firsthand. As a writer for iCEV, Brad’s goal is to help teachers empower their students by listening to educators’ concerns and creating content that answers their most pressing questions about career and technical education.

Print/Save as PDF

As part of the Google suite of applications, Google Slides is an in-demand slide presentation software used by businesses around the world. With Google Slides, users can create high-quality presentations and seamlessly share and collaborate with their colleagues.

But if you don’t have adequate resources to teach Google Slides in your classes, your students are at risk of not knowing how to use this popular productivity tool.

To help find resources you can use in your classroom, we’ve brought together four of the best Google Slides lesson plans around:

  1. Google Slides Tutorial from GCF Learn Free
  2. Google Slides Tutorials from Slidesgo School
  3. How to Use Google Drive, Docs, and Slides Tutorial Presentation for Beginners
  4. Google Slides and Presentations Tutorial

After reading, you’ll know your Google Slides lesson plans options to decide what’s best for your classes.

1. Google Slides Tutorial from GCF Learn Free

GCF Learn Free is a service of the Goodwill Community Foundation. The GCF Learn Free program helps people develop the skills necessary for learning and living in today’s world. Their library of resources features over 2,000 lessons on 200 different topics, including computer applications.

The Google Slides Tutorial includes 26 step-by-step lessons. The first seven lessons cover the basics of Google Apps and Google Drive. The rest of the tutorial covers Google Slides in detail, moving from more fundamental concepts to advanced features.

This comprehensive lesson plan delivers everything students need to get started with Google Slides, from basic slide design and formatting to using transitions, animations, and speaker notes. Lessons are delivered online in a text-based format and are available in video form through GCF Learn Free’s YouTube channel.

The Google Slides Tutorial is free and openly available on the web. Learners have the option of making an account to save their progress.

Overall, the lessons in the tutorial are straightforward and easy to understand, making this resource a good choice for computer applications teachers who want to explore the major features of Google Slides. However, the materials are designed for students to study at their own pace, which might be difficult to integrate into a regular classroom environment.

2. Google Slides Tutorials from Slidesgo School

Another option for Google Slides tutorials is Slidesgo School, a website that provides free templates for both Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Instead of a cohesive step-by-step curriculum, Slidesgo’s Google Slides Tutorials take a different approach. Each tutorial is a standalone lesson that introduces students to another skill or concept within the application.

Slidesgo offers dozens of tutorial options, including:

  • What is Google Slides and What Is It Used For?
  • How to Make Charts
  • How to Add or Change Themes
  • How to Change the Design in Google Slides
  • How to Add, Duplicate, Move, Delete, or Hide Slides
  • How to Add a Bulleted or Numbered List
  • How to Add Superscript and Subscript
  • How to Export Your Google Slides Presentation

One of the advantages of Slidesgo is that the tutorials go into more detail than other Google Slides lesson plans. Slidesgo is also continually adding new tutorials, so teachers will have more resources from which to choose.

On the other hand, the tutorials aren’t organized in any particular order, so it could be hard to find the resources you need.

Overall, Slidesgo offers a great selection of Google Slides lessons for free, and you can easily add them to your existing computer applications curriculum.

3. How to Use Google Drive, Docs, and Slides Tutorial Presentation for Beginners

A third place you can turn to for Google Slides resources is Teachers Pay Teachers, the online marketplace for educators to buy, sell, and share classroom materials.

Teach Ontario is a Canada-based Teachers Pay Teachers seller with instructional resources in various subject areas. For the Google suite of applications, Teach Ontario offers a combined set of lesson resources that covers Google Drive, Docs, and Slides.

With this resource, teachers receive 22 pages of instructional material appropriate for a middle school audience. Included is a slide presentation teachers can use to cover the most basic Google Slides concepts in both Google and Microsoft PowerPoint formats.

The presentation is editable and easy to use so that most teachers can immediately incorporate the materials into their classes.

Unlike other lesson plans on this list, this resource isn’t free. Teachers will need to pay $6.00 for the Google Slides tutorial presentation.

For teachers who want a quick option to cover only the most essential aspects of Google Slides, this is a no-frills option that could fit the bill. But the presentation doesn’t discuss Slides exclusively since parts of the presentation cover Google Drive and Google Docs. This could leave some instructors wishing they had chosen a more exhaustive instructional resource.

4. Google Slides and Presentations Tutorial

Another resource teachers can find on Teachers Pay Teachers is the Google Slides and Presentations Tutorial from RileyReadsYA.

RileyReadsYA is a middle school teacher who creates quality resources for students up to grade 8. Her Google Slides tutorial is designed to ensure students have a working knowledge of the application so they can create presentations in any class.

This resource features a 55-slide Google Slides presentation that includes:

  • 23 Tutorial Slides
  • 22 Guided Practice Slides
  • 2 Successful Slide Sorts
  • Successful Slides Student Reflection
  • Answer Keys and Explanations

The interactive nature of this presentation makes it easy for students to participate and understand how a slide presentation works in practice. Teachers also can use the reflection questions as a formative assessment to check for students’ understanding.

This Teachers Pay Teachers resource is available for $4.00, which is a good value for the amount of content available. While you’ll still need to make time for students to practice using Google Slides for themselves, this tutorial can be a great starting point for most educators and blend seamlessly into your existing teaching materials.

Teach Google Slides with a Comprehensive Computer Applications Curriculum

Finding quality Google Slides resources can take time and effort. After all, you want suitable materials for your learners to master the fundamentals of presentation software so they can successfully use slides in various contexts.

But chances are, you need more than Google Slides lesson plans in your classroom. Many teachers have found that their students learn computer applications best using a comprehensive curriculum system like iCEV.

The iCEV curriculum system gives students a cohesive learning experience where they can learn not only Google Applications but also fundamentals like computer systems and keyboarding.

To learn more about the iCEV computer applications curriculum to see if it’s right for your students, visit the curriculum page.

Explore the iCEV Computer Applications Curriculum