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Teaching strategies that still work when students have AI

A list of effective teaching strategies for teachers in grades 4 through 12: how to run each one, how long it takes, a classroom example, and the research behind it. Each strategy has students do their thinking where you can see it, which matters more now that a chatbot can hand them a finished answer.

See the 12 strategies

Types of teaching strategies

Most teaching strategies fall into six families. Different teaching strategies do different jobs, so start with what you need students to do next.

  • Questioning

    How you ask, who answers and how long you wait. Small changes here decide how many students are thinking at once.

    Cold calling, mini whiteboards

  • Discussion

    Students talking to each other about a text or a problem, with a clear task.

    Think-pair-share, Socratic seminar, jigsaw

  • Practice

    Making what students learned stick.

    Retrieval practice, spaced review, worked examples

  • Writing

    Students working out what they think on paper, in class.

    In-class writing

  • Inquiry

    Students investigate a question before you explain the answer.

    Inquiry-based learning, below

  • Assessment

    Finding out what students understand while there's still time to do something about it.

    Exit tickets, short conferences, vote-talk-revote

A list of instructional strategies, with examples

Twelve different instructional strategies, each laid out the same way: what it is, how to run it, how long it takes, an example, and why it holds up with AI around. They work in most subjects from about 4th grade up.

01

Retrieval practice

Students write down what they remember about a topic before they look at their notes. It's a quiz with no grade, or a very small one.

How to run it

  1. Write three to five questions on material from last week and last month.
  2. Students answer from memory for five minutes. No notes, no talking.
  3. Go over the answers right away. Students mark what they missed in a different color.
Time
5 to 10 minutes
Prep
5 minutes
Goal
Making it stick

Example: 8th grade US history, Monday warm-up: "Name two causes of the War of 1812 and one thing that changed because of it."

Why it holds up: The benefit comes from the effort of remembering, and a chatbot can't do that for a student. It all happens on paper, in the first minutes of class.

02

Spaced review

Coming back to old material in short bursts over weeks, instead of covering it once and moving on.

How to run it

  1. Keep a running list of the key ideas from each unit.
  2. Put one or two old items into each week's warm-ups or quizzes.
  3. Bring back the ones students miss most often, more often.
Time
A few minutes a week
Prep
Keeping the list
Goal
Making it stick

Example: Algebra 1 in March. One of every five warm-up problems comes from the fall semester.

Why it holds up: It shows you what students can still do weeks after a unit, without notes or a device.

03

Worked examples, then fading

You show a fully solved problem, then problems with some steps left blank, then problems students solve alone.

How to run it

  1. Walk through a complete example and explain why each step happens.
  2. Give a second problem with the last few steps left blank.
  3. Leave more blank each time, until students solve one from start to finish.
Time
Part of a lesson
Prep
10 minutes
Goal
Problem solving

Example: Chemistry, balancing equations. The first equation is fully balanced, with notes. The second is missing its last coefficient. The third is blank.

Why it holds up: Students fill in the missing steps in class, where you can see which step trips each of them up.

04

Think-pair-share

Students think alone, talk it over with a partner, then share with the class.

How to run it

  1. Ask an open question and give 30 to 60 seconds of silent thinking. Having students jot down a few words helps.
  2. Partners compare answers for two minutes.
  3. Call on three or four pairs to share.
Time
About 5 minutes
Prep
None
Goal
Getting discussion going

Example: 6th grade science: "A metal spoon and a wooden spoon have been in the same room all day. Why does the metal one feel colder?"

Why it holds up: Students work out an answer aloud with a classmate before anyone could look one up.

05

Cold calling, with wait time

You ask the whole class a question, wait, then call on a student by name instead of taking hands. Done warmly, it gets every student thinking, and nobody feels caught out.

How to run it

  1. Ask the question to everyone before you say a name.
  2. Wait at least three seconds. The research section explains why.
  3. Call on a student. If they're stuck, say you'll come back to them, and then do.
Time
None. It's how you ask
Prep
A shuffled class list or name sticks
Goal
Checking understanding

Example: 5th grade math: "Everyone, think about this on your own. Which is bigger, 0.5 or 0.45?" Count to three. "Sam, which one, and how do you know?"

Why it holds up: Any student might be asked, so every student needs an answer ready, in their own words.

06

Mini whiteboards

Every student writes an answer at the same time and holds it up.

How to run it

  1. Ask a question with a short answer.
  2. Count down from three. Everyone holds up their board.
  3. Scan the room and decide whether to move on or reteach.
Time
A minute or two per question
Prep
Boards and markers. A sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve works too
Goal
Checking understanding, problem solving

Example: 4th grade fractions: "Write a fraction equal to 3/4." In five seconds you know who has it.

Why it holds up: You see the whole class's answers in a few seconds, and there's no time to look anything up.

07

Exit tickets

One or two questions at the end of class that tell you what students learned that day.

How to run it

  1. Ask a question tied directly to the day's goal.
  2. Students answer on a slip of paper before they leave.
  3. Sort the slips into three piles: got it, almost, not yet. Plan how tomorrow starts from the piles.
Time
3 to 5 minutes, plus 5 to sort
Prep
2 minutes
Goal
Checking understanding, writing

Example: 10th grade English: "In one sentence, how does the narrator's view of his father change in chapter 3?"

Why it holds up: Students answer on paper, about today's lesson, before they leave. You hear from every student, including the quiet ones.

08

Socratic seminar

A discussion students run themselves, built on open questions about a text. Every claim has to point back to the text.

How to run it

  1. Students read and annotate the text beforehand, and each writes two open questions.
  2. Seat them in a circle. Open with one question, then stay mostly quiet.
  3. In the last five minutes, each student writes down what changed in their thinking.
Time
30 to 45 minutes, plus the reading
Prep
Choosing the text and the opening question
Goal
Getting discussion going

Example: 11th grade English, The Great Gatsby: "Does Gatsby love Daisy, or the idea of her?"

Why it holds up: Students have to respond to each other live, with the text open in front of them.

09

Jigsaw

Each student becomes the expert on one piece of the material, then teaches it to a group that holds the other pieces.

How to run it

  1. Split the material into four or five parts.
  2. Expert groups study one part together.
  3. Regroup so each new group has one expert per part. Each expert teaches their piece.
Time
One class period
Prep
Splitting and copying the material
Goal
Getting discussion going

Example: 7th grade social studies. Five primary sources about the same event, one per expert group.

Why it holds up: In each group, every student is the only source for their piece, so they have to understand it well enough to teach it.

The jigsaw method started here in Austin. Psychologist Elliot Aronson and his graduate students designed it in 1971, when Austin's schools had just been desegregated and white, Black and Hispanic students were sharing classrooms for the first time. It was built to make students depend on each other instead of competing. Source

10

In-class writing

Short, timed writing in class, on paper or on a school device with nothing else open.

How to run it

  1. Give a focused prompt that draws on class discussion or something only your students know.
  2. Set a timer for 10 to 20 minutes.
  3. Collect the drafts. If students revise at home, compare the final version with what they wrote in class.
Time
10 to 20 minutes
Prep
Writing the prompt
Goal
Writing

Example: 9th grade: "Describe one place in this school you'd change, and exactly what you'd do to it."

Why it holds up: Over a semester you build a record of each student's own writing to compare later work against.

11

Short conferences

Two- or three-minute conversations in which a student explains one choice they made in their work.

How to run it

  1. While the class works, call students up one at a time.
  2. Ask about one specific choice: "Why this example?" or "What would you cut?"
  3. Note what they can explain easily and what they can't.
Time
2 to 3 minutes per student, spread across a week
Prep
None
Goal
Checking understanding, writing

Example: Research paper check-in: "Walk me through how you found this source."

Why it holds up: A student who made a choice can usually explain it. A student who didn't make it usually can't.

12

Vote, talk, revote

Students answer a multiple-choice question about a key idea, argue it out with someone who chose differently, then answer again.

How to run it

  1. Write one question where each wrong answer matches a common misunderstanding.
  2. Everyone votes at once, with letter cards, fingers or whiteboards.
  3. If the class is split, students find someone who chose differently and try to convince them. Then everyone votes again.
Time
5 to 8 minutes
Prep
Writing a good question, which is the hard part
Goal
Checking understanding, problem solving

Example: Physics: "A ball is thrown straight up. At the very top, what is its acceleration?" Plenty of students say zero.

Why it holds up: The learning happens in the argument between students, and the second vote shows you which misunderstandings survived it.

Working this out on your own?

Only 18% of US public school teachers have received any formal guidance from their school on how to use AI (Gallup, 2026). If you think teachers should help decide how AI is used in schools, add your name.

Effective teaching practices: what the research supports

A lot of classroom advice has little evidence behind it. Below are examples of evidence-based instructional strategies: what the studies found, and the limits worth knowing.

Testing beats rereading

In a 2006 study, college students had four short sessions with a passage on a science topic. One group spent all four sessions reading it. Another read it once, then spent the other three sessions writing down everything they could remember. On a test five minutes later, the readers did better. A week later, the recall group remembered 61% of the passage's ideas and the readers remembered 40%, even though the readers had been through the passage about 14 times and the recall group about 3. The readers were also more confident they would remember it. Roediger and Karpicke, 2006

Spacing practice out

A 2013 review rated ten common study techniques by how well the evidence supports them. Only two were rated high: practice testing, and spreading practice out over time. Highlighting and rereading, two of the techniques students report using most, were rated low. Dunlosky and colleagues, 2013

Worked examples for new material

In a 1985 algebra study, students who learned from solved examples went on to solve similar problems faster and with fewer errors than students who learned by working practice problems. The benefit was weaker on problems that looked different from the examples, so fade the examples as students improve and mix in problems that look different. Sweller and Cooper, 1985

Checking understanding during the lesson

A 1998 review of 250 sources found that using classroom assessment to adjust teaching raised achievement by 0.4 to 0.7 standard deviations. That's roughly the difference between an average student scoring at the 50th percentile and scoring between the 66th and the 76th. What counted was using the results to change what happened next in class. A 2011 analysis put the average gain lower, at about 0.2 standard deviations, and researchers still disagree about the size. Black and Wiliam, 1998; Kingston and Nash, 2011

Waiting longer after a question

In elementary science classrooms, Mary Budd Rowe found that teachers typically waited about one second for an answer. When teachers learned to wait three to five seconds, students gave longer answers and asked more questions of their own, and students their teachers saw as slower answered more often. Rowe, 1972

One popular idea the research doesn't support

Teaching to "learning styles," meaning matching lessons to whether a student is supposedly a visual or auditory learner, isn't backed by good evidence. A 2008 review found "no adequate evidence base" for using learning-styles assessments in general teaching, and its authors suggested schools spend their limited resources on practices with strong evidence instead. Pashler and colleagues, 2008

Teaching approaches, strategies and techniques: what's the difference?

People use these words loosely when they talk about classroom instruction, and in conversation that's fine. When you're planning, it helps to separate them.

TermWhat it meansExample
ApproachYour overall view of how students learn best. It shapes everything else you plan.Inquiry-based learning
StrategyA plan for a lesson, or part of one, that puts an approach to work.Jigsaw
TechniqueA single move you make in the moment.Asking "How do you know?" after an answer

You'll also see approaches called teaching approaches, pedagogical approaches or instructional approaches, and strategies called pedagogical strategies or instructional strategies. The terms are interchangeable. "Teaching methods" is the loosest term of all, and usually covers strategies and techniques together.

Pedagogy examples: five teaching approaches

  • Direct instruction. You explain and model, students practice with your feedback, and you step back as they get it. It suits new material.
  • Inquiry-based learning. Students investigate a question before or while you explain. It works best with guidance. More on this below.
  • Collaborative learning. Students work toward a shared goal, and each person's part matters to the result. Jigsaw is one version.
  • Experiential learning. Students learn by doing something, then reflecting on it: labs, field work, simulations, service projects.
  • Project-based learning. A longer project built around an open question, ending in something students make for an audience beyond the teacher.

Further reading

If you want to learn pedagogy in more depth, start with two of the review articles in the sources below: Dunlosky and colleagues on study techniques, and Pashler and colleagues on learning styles. Both were published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, which makes its reports free to read.

Classroom teaching techniques you can use tomorrow

Techniques are the small moves inside a lesson. None of these takes any prep.

  • Ask "How do you know?"

    After any answer, right or wrong. It tells you whether a right answer was a guess.

  • Come back to "I don't know"

    If a student can't answer, take the answer from someone else, then go back to the first student and have them say it in their own words.

  • Say it back

    Before a student adds to a classmate's answer, they sum it up first.

  • Turn and talk

    Give partners 30 seconds on a question before anyone answers aloud.

  • Show a wrong answer

    Put a common mistake on the board and have students find it and explain what went wrong.

  • One-sentence summary

    End class with: "Write one sentence that explains today's lesson to someone who was absent."

Creative teaching strategies

Creative teaching gives students a problem with more than one good answer and asks them to make something. These creative teaching strategies work in most subjects.

  • Design challenge

    Students solve a problem within set limits. Math or health: "Plan a week of school lunches at $3.50 per student that meet the nutrition rules on this sheet."

  • Role play

    Students argue from a perspective that isn't their own. History: an 1850 town meeting about whether to let the railroad through, with each student speaking as a specific resident.

  • Structured debate

    Assign sides. Before arguing, each speaker has to sum up the other side's last point well enough that the other side agrees with the summary.

  • Students write the test

    Groups write quiz questions with answer keys. The best ones go on the quiz.

Why they hold up: Each one depends on decisions students make in the room, about material specific to your class.

Inquiry-based learning

Inquiry-based learning definition

Inquiry-based learning starts with a question, a problem or a puzzling observation, and students investigate it before you explain the idea behind it. Your job shifts from telling to setting up the investigation and steering it.

What the research says about inquiry

The evidence favors guided inquiry. A 2011 analysis of 164 studies found that leaving students to discover ideas entirely on their own did worse than explicit instruction, especially for teenagers. Discovery with guidance did better than other methods. Inquiry-based strategies work best when students get a question worth investigating and enough structure to investigate it. Alfieri and colleagues, 2011

Levels of inquiry

Inquiry-based learning techniques differ mostly in how much you decide and how much students decide. Start with more structure and hand over control as students get used to it.

  • Structured inquiry. You give the question and the method. Students carry it out and work out what the results mean.
  • Guided inquiry. You give the question. Students design how to investigate it.
  • Open inquiry. Students choose the question and the method. Save this for students who've done the other two.

Inquiry-based learning examples

One from each of four subjects:

  • Science: "Which paper towel absorbs the most water?" Students design a fair test.
  • Math: "Why do some fractions turn into repeating decimals and others don't?" Students convert fractions in lowest terms and look for a pattern in the denominators.
  • History: "How did people in our town vote in 1920, and why?" Students work from local newspaper archives or public records.
  • English: "What makes a first line keep you reading?" Students collect first lines from 20 books, sort them, and name the patterns.

Inquiry-based learning in science

Science is where inquiry fits most easily, because the investigation can be an experiment. A common cycle: ask a question, predict, test, explain what happened using the evidence, then compare findings with other groups.

Inquiry-based learning in the classroom: a one-lesson plan

  1. Hook, 2 minutes. In a tub of water, a can of regular soda sinks and a can of diet soda floats. Test your cans beforehand.
  2. Predict, 3 minutes. Each student writes down what they think is going on.
  3. Investigate, 20 minutes. Groups test their explanations with more cans, a kitchen scale and the nutrition labels, and record what they find.
  4. Explain, 10 minutes. Groups share. You connect their findings to the idea behind them, in this case density.
  5. Check, 5 minutes. An exit ticket with a new case: "An egg sinks in tap water but floats in very salty water. Why?"

Inquiry-based learning activities like this one still work with AI around, because the evidence comes from the room.

What changed with AI

A chatbot can hand a student a finished essay, solution or summary in seconds. In a Pew Research Center survey, 1 in 10 US teens said they do all or most of their schoolwork with a chatbot's help. Pew Research Center, 2026

That changes which classroom instructional strategies tell you what students know. Work done in the room, from memory, out loud or in conversation still shows you a student's own thinking. A finished product made at home shows you less than it used to.

Can you tell a student's essay from a chatbot's? Spot the slop is a five-minute exercise with six essays. For more, read what the research says about AI and learning and why we don't recommend AI detectors.

Start the exercise

Frequently asked questions

About teaching strategies, and what AI changes.

What are teaching strategies?

The plans and moves teachers use to help students learn: how a lesson is structured, how questions get asked, how students practice and how understanding gets checked.

What are the different types of teaching strategies?

Most types of instructional strategies fall into six families: questioning, discussion, practice, writing, inquiry and assessment. See Types of teaching strategies above.

What's the difference between a teaching strategy and a teaching method?

A strategy is a plan for a lesson or part of one, like a jigsaw. "Method" is looser. When people talk about teaching methods in the classroom, they usually mean strategies and the smaller techniques inside them together.

What are research-based instructional strategies?

Research-based strategies are ones with support from repeated controlled studies, with different students and subjects. Retrieval practice, spaced practice, worked examples and checking understanding during the lesson are among the best supported.

What are some highly effective teaching strategies?

It depends on the goal. For remembering material, retrieval practice and spaced practice have the strongest evidence. For learning a new procedure, worked examples. For finding out who's lost, mini whiteboards and exit tickets. The goal filter on the list above sorts them this way.

What are good teaching strategies for secondary students?

Most strategies on this page work from about 4th grade through 12th. Socratic seminars, structured debate and short conferences suit older students especially well, because they ask students to argue and explain at length. Retrieval practice helps at every grade level.

Do these strategies stop students from using AI?

No. They change where the thinking happens. Work done in class, from memory or in conversation shows you what each student can do on their own, whatever they do with AI at home.

Add your name

Teachers should have a say in how AI is used in their classrooms. Sapphire Core Institute is a nonprofit gathering the names of teachers who agree.

Not a teacher? Anyone who cares about this can add their name.

Sources

  1. Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). "Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention." Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
  2. Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). "Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques." Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266
  3. Sweller, J., & Cooper, G. A. (1985). "The use of worked examples as a substitute for problem solving in learning algebra." Cognition and Instruction, 2(1), 59–89. doi.org/10.1207/s1532690xci0201_3
  4. Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). "Assessment and classroom learning." Assessment in Education, 5(1), 7–74. doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050102
  5. Kingston, N., & Nash, B. (2011). "Formative assessment: A meta-analysis and a call for research." Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 30(4), 28–37. doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.2011.00220.x
  6. Rowe, M. B. (1972). "Wait-time and rewards as instructional variables." ERIC ED061103. files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED061103.pdf
  7. Alfieri, L., Brooks, P. J., Aldrich, N. J., & Tenenbaum, H. R. (2011). "Does discovery-based instruction enhance learning?" Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(1), 1–18. doi.org/10.1037/a0021017
  8. Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). "Learning styles: Concepts and evidence." Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119. doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x
  9. Aronson, E. "History of the jigsaw classroom." jigsaw.org
  10. Pew Research Center (2026). "How teens use and view AI." Survey of 1,458 US teens aged 13 to 17, September to October 2025. pewresearch.org
  11. Walton Family Foundation and Gallup (2026). Survey of 2,069 US public K-12 teachers, February to March 2026. news.gallup.com