Free Digital Templates to Save Time and Teach Creatively

December 19, 2025•5 min read

Free Digital Templates to Save Time and Teach Creatively

Well, hello everybody and welcome to Day Seven of the 12 Tech Tips of Christmas for 2025! It’s lovely to have you here.

We’re officially halfway through the series, and over the next six days we’ve still got plenty more tips, tricks and tools to share. But today’s episode is a little different — because instead of spotlighting one tool, we’re sharing something designed to make all your tools easier to use…

Today, we’re diving into digital templates.

What Are Evolve EdTech Digital Templates?

At Evolve EdTech, we’re big on giving educators practical resources they can use immediately. Our free digital templates are designed to help teachers feel:

Confident using educational technology
Organised with planning and classroom workflow
Inspired to create engaging learning activities

These templates are built to take pressure off you. Whether you’re planning lessons, tracking learning, running reflection activities, or building student-friendly tasks — our templates give you a head start so you can focus on what matters most:

Great teaching. (Because that’s our core business.)

Why Do Educators Love Our Templates?

Here’s the honest truth: teachers are busy. The workload is real. The “I’ll just quickly make a worksheet” lie has trapped us all at some point.

That’s where templates come in.

Educators love our templates because they:

Cut preparation time dramatically
Help create visually engaging, professional resources
Promote consistency across units, lessons and student tasks
Support teachers at all levels of EdTech confidence
Require no coding, no fancy setup — just register, download and use

They’re designed to be plug-and-play. Simple, practical, and classroom-ready.

A Snapshot of Templates You Can Access for Free

We’ve got a growing library, so today we highlighted a handful of favourites to show the variety and how they can be used in real classrooms.

1) Stop and Jot (Exit Ticket)

A quick and effective end-of-lesson template where students jot down:

Key learning
Interesting facts
New ideas
Questions they still have

Perfect for quick formative feedback — and a great way to spot misconceptions before they snowball.

2) Ready to Roll (Reading Strategy Series)

This template is part of a series (with additional slides) built around reading comprehension and text features.

Students work through prompts connected to:

Main topics
Images, diagrams, tables
Context clues
Key reading strategies

It’s structured but still fun — and ideal for explicit literacy teaching across KLAs.

3) Summary Shirts (Exit Ticket + Creativity)

This one is a crowd-pleaser.

Students identify two new or interesting ideas from the lesson and design a “summary shirt” to represent their learning.

It works beautifully in:

English and Humanities
Science concepts
Maths formulas
PDHPE reflections
Even quick revision lessons

It’s learning… with a bit of personality.

4) Visible Thinking Routines (Harvard Project Zero)

We’ve created templates inspired by the Visible Thinking Routines from Harvard Project Zero, making it easier to actually implement them in class.

Examples include:

Beginning, Middle, End
See, Think, Wonder-style routines
See, Wonder, Connect

The structure is done for you — students simply add their thinking.

5) My Learning Awards (Weekly Reflection)

A reflective activity where students:

Choose their top three pieces of work for the week
Allocate Gold, Silver and Bronze
Explain why each earned that award

It’s a great way to build:

Metacognition
Pride in learning
Goal setting and reflection
Student voice

Yes, it’s brilliant for primary… but it absolutely works in high school too.

6) Character Summary Template (A Classic)

One of our earliest templates (hello, COVID era!) and still a favourite.

Students capture a character using prompts like:

Character name
Who they are
What they do
What they say
What they represent

A simple, structured way to build deeper textual understanding.

7) Bingo Card Template (Because Bingo Works)

This one is delightfully simple: a 5 x 5 grid that you can customise.

Use it for:

Vocabulary bingo
Revision bingo
Reading or spelling bingo
Topic review across any subject

It’s easy to create, easy to reuse, and students always buy in.

8) Question Chart (Who/What/When/Where/Why/How)

A brilliant scaffold for building quality questions after reading, viewing or listening.

Students combine starters to form questions like:

Who is…?
What did…?
Why does…?
How might…?

It’s a strong literacy tool and supports inquiry-based learning.

9) REF Assessment Reflection Grid

A powerful post-assessment reflection activity:

Easy Right
Easy Wrong
Hard Right
Hard Wrong

Students place reflections into each quadrant (digitally or with post-its), helping you spot patterns and plan what to reteach or reinforce next.

It’s student reflection that actually leads somewhere — not just “I need to try harder.”

Where to Find the Templates

All our templates are available on the Evolve EdTech website, ready for you to access 365 days a year.

You can find them by:

Going to the homepage and selecting Templates, or
Using the top menu: Resources → Digital Templates, or
Heading directly to the templates section via the website

Once you find a template you like, you simply:

Click the template
Enter your name and email
Submit the form
Receive the template via email and start using it

Easy.

Quick Facts About the Template Collection

Here’s the wrap-up from today’s episode:

There are currently around 80 templates available (and growing)
They’re 100% free to access, download and use
New templates will continue to be added over time
Share them with your colleagues — they’re designed to help educators everywhere

And here’s the exciting extra…

Coming in 2026: Even More Access Through the Academy

In 2026, members of The Tech-Ready Teacher Academy will be able to access the full template collection inside the membership, with editable Canva versions so you can customise templates for your class, faculty or school.