George Lucas Educational Foundation
Edutopia

Teaching Strategies

Discover and share best practices for improving your teaching craft -- delivering instruction, engaging students, reaching struggling students, and more.

  • Optimizing Station Rotations in Blended Learning

    Using three stations effectively—teacher-led, online, and offline—should provide your students with plenty of ways to collaborate.
    Laura Lee

  • Teaching Consent to Elementary Students

    Teaching consent in the elementary grades means using nonsexual situations to guide students to assert and respect boundaries.
    Emelina Minero

  • Lessons Learned in Teaching Native American History

    A white teacher shares resources and things she’s learned: Be humble, find the gaps in your knowledge, and listen to Native voices.
    Christine Boatman

  • 60-Second Strategy: Respond, Reflect, and Review

    This simple activity helps students practice giving and receiving peer feedback—and gets them out of their desks.

  • 3 Ways to Boost Students’ Conceptual Thinking

    Coaching students to think in terms of concepts helps them understand how to apply their learning in the future.
    Carla Marschall

  • Inviting Participation With Thumbs-Up Responses

    A quick assessment strategy replaces raised hands, encouraging more students to contribute by accommodating their different processing needs.

  • Simple Ways to Integrate Four Evidence-Based Teaching Strategies

    Jennifer Gonzalez talks with a researcher and a teacher to tackle the science—and the logistics—behind teaching strategies like spaced practice and interleaving.
    Laura Lee

  • What Doesn’t Work: Literacy Practices We Should Abandon

    The number one concern that I hear from educators is lack of time, particularly lack of instructional time with students. Although we can't entirely solve the time problem, we can mitigate it by carefully analyzing our use of class time.
    Nell K. Duke

  • 30 Techniques to Quiet a Noisy Class

    Most teachers have a method of calling for quiet, and we’ve collected a variety of good ideas for elementary, middle, and high school.
    Todd Finley

  • How to Adapt Popular Discussion Strategies for Kindergarten

    Modeling tried-and-true discussion strategies for the youngest students gives them a way to begin to share their thinking with peers.
    Ruth Calkins

  • Promoting Active Reading Skills

    Placing prompts throughout a text challenges students to analyze and interpret what they read—improving reading comprehension.  
    Lauren Gehr

  • The Benefits of Sharing Our Planning With Students

    Explaining the intentions behind a lesson plan can boost engagement and help students get back on track when something isn’t working.
    Mark Gardner

  • How Learning Happens

    In this video series, we explore how educators can guide all students, regardless of their developmental starting points, to become productive and engaged learners.

  • Demonstrating Self-Regulation With Tone of Voice

    When teachers model self-regulation by using a voice that is calm, neutral, and assertive, they help students feel cared for—and ready to learn.

  • Accommodating Students With Dyslexia

    These five easy-to-implement accommodations can make class less stressful and more manageable for students with dyslexia.
    Jessica Hamman