Musical Instrument Research Project Template - structured digital slides

Researching a musical instrument is a fun and engaging school general music project! Students love choosing instruments that interest them; from violin to drum kit, trumpet to sitar, piano to electric guitar… and teachers love the structured, project-based independent learning. If you need a no-prep, editable, and differentiated template to guide your students through a research project, this digital research template gives your middle or high school students everything they need to research, organize, and present information about any musical instrument - without copy-pasting from Google or relying on AI!

This resource includes 16 customisable slides focusing on an instrument’s history, construction, musical timbre, famous players/composers, and uses in music. Each slide prompts short, meaningful responses which students must research before entering onto the slides.

Teachers can easily differentiate by editing or removing slides, adding custom prompts, or adapting the difficulty level to suit different year groups, class needs, or lesson lengths.

What’s included?
16 customisable slides
PowerPoint + Google Slides formats
Editable teacher rubric for quick and consistent grading
Teacher instructions
Extension activity ideas for fast finishers

Tell me more!
Research projects are a staple in our music classrooms. They encourage student choice and curiosity, build digital literacy and research skills, and can be completed independently - making them perfect for cover lessons/supply teachers, project based learning, independent work, or flexible lesson planning.

But open-ended presentations can leave students overwhelmed. Blank slides often lead to shallow copy/paste answers, huge unread paragraphs, or students asking AI to do the work for them. That’s why this template was created - it gives structure and clarity while still allowing personalisation and choice.

Students are guided through each subtopic with clear prompts such as:
instrument family
range and sound
labelled parts
how it is made/materials used
when it was invented
changes over time
famous players
composers who wrote for it
reflection and personal opinion

The short-answer format helps students summarise and present their findings, showing genuine understanding instead of copy & pasted facts.

Each slide has been individually designed with coordinated colors and clean, age-appropriate layouts (not another generic Canva template!). The result is a visually appealing project that showcases student learning without clutter or distraction.