These eight research-informed approaches for planning and instruction can make classrooms feel less like a lecture and more like a workshop, helping to reach more learners and build deeper thinking.
With 140 SAIS schools participating in a recent curriculum directors’ pulse survey, 44% name balancing traditional and innovative teaching practices as a top challenge, and 35% cite enhancing instructional strategies as a top curriculum priority.
The strategies below aren’t rival philosophies competing for a school’s identity. A Project Based Learning unit can be planned with Understanding by Design, delivered through a Modern Classroom self-paced structure, and assessed with a competency scale, all in the same classroom. Rather than asking teachers to pick one label, this guide treats each strategy as a tool, something to reach for when it fits the goal, alongside what your school already does well.
AI can provide a faster way into the planning and daily execution of whatever approach a teacher already uses. For each strategy below, you’ll find a short explanation, supporting research, a specific way AI can assist, and tools your school can use to help teachers put the idea into practice.
Competency-Based Education
Mastery & Proficiency
Competency-based education allows students to show growth through demonstrating mastery of skills or knowledge before moving forward. Learning is personalized and tailored to the individual. Teachers become facilitators to support the needs of the students instead of following a set calendar.
AI in Practice
AI can help teachers draft performance tasks, projects, and assessments that map cleanly to specific competencies, differentiate versions of a task for different readiness levels, and align materials back to a stated skill set. AI-powered dashboards can help show a student’s growth trajectory across specific skills rather than just a grade point average and can flag students who are stalled on a particular competency.
Research
Classrooms implementing Competency-Based Learning demonstrate greater levels of learner participation, self-reflection, and contextual application of knowledge, leading to well-rounded development beyond academic achievement. Discover Education
Tool
A template for turning any standard into a 0–4 mastery scale with clear, usable descriptors at every level.
Design Thinking
Human-Centered Problem Solving
Design thinking moves students through empathy, defining a problem, ideation, prototyping, and testing. It is less a curriculum than a mindset: start with a real person’s need, try something imperfect, and improve it based on feedback. It pairs naturally with project-based learning but centers on empathy for a user as the starting point rather than the end goal.
AI in Practice
During ideation, AI can act as a brainstorming partner that generates a wide first pass of possible solutions for students to react to, critique, and improve, rather than starting from a blank page.
Sample prompt: Generate 10 to 15 varied possible solutions to this problem, ranging from safe and practical to unconventional and provocative. Don’t filter for feasibility. For each idea, give a one-sentence description, nothing more.
Research
A recent review of K-12 STEM classrooms found that empathy, prototyping, and iterative testing are the core practices most associated with stronger problem-solving skills and a growth mindset in students. Monash University
Tool
Resources from The Henry Ford Learning Institute
Design challenge planning form, empathy map, sample design challenges for all grade levels, and more.
Modern Classrooms Project
Self-Paced & Mastery-Based
The Modern Classrooms model blends self-paced, mastery-based instruction with short recorded lessons, so students move at their own speed while the teacher circulates to support small groups. It trades the single-pace lecture for a room where every student can see exactly where they stand and what comes next.
AI in Practice
AI can draft the script and quiz questions for a short instructional video from a teacher’s existing slides or notes, cutting the most time-consuming part of building a self-paced unit down to a review-and-edit task.
Sample prompt: I’m building a self-paced instructional video for my Modern Classroom Project unit. Here are my existing slides or notes on this topic: [paste slide text, bullet notes, or a rough outline]
Draft 2 to 3 short comprehension quiz questions to place after each section, checking whether the student understood that section well enough to move on. Include a mix of question types (multiple choice, short answer) and provide the correct answer and a one-sentence explanation for each.
Research
In a Johns Hopkins University-analyzed classroom, students receiving special education services grew from a 59% average on the pre-test to a 94% average on the post-test, with all students gaining an average of 16 percentage points. Next Generation Learning Challenges
Tool
In a self-paced classroom, every student should know exactly what they will work on each day. This helps students get right to work, fosters collaboration, and allows the educator to provide differentiated support. This Google file provides 20+ templates for various grade levels.
Project-Based Learning (PBL)
Applied Learning
PBL organizes learning around a real-world question or challenge that ends in a public product or presentation. Project-Based Learning asks students to research, revise, and defend their thinking the way professionals do, rather than complete an assignment for an audience of one.
AI in Practice
AI can help a teacher test a project question, generate real-world scenario variations for different student groups, or draft a rubric that the teacher then refines with the class.
Sample prompt: I’m designing a Project Based Learning unit. Here’s my driving question: [state the question]. Here’s the content or skill focus: [list standards, concepts, or skills the project should target].
Please test the driving question, generate scenario variations, and draft a rubric with 3-4 performance levels covering both content mastery and process skills.
Research
Second graders in PBL classrooms gained five to six months of additional social studies learning compared to peers in traditional instruction. AP students passed their exams at rates eight percentage points higher after one year. Middle schoolers outperformed peers by 11 points on science assessments and 12-18 points on math. University of Michigan
Tool
Tools available on pblworks.org with free account
Downloadable tools and guides including a project design rubric, project teaching rubric, design elements checklist, parent letters, and peer critique protocol.
Student-Led Learning
Voice & Agency
Student-led practices, from choice boards to student-led conferences, hand over real decisions about pacing, topic, or format to the learner. The goal isn’t a free-for-all; it’s giving students enough ownership that they can articulate what they’re learning and why it matters, not just complete what’s assigned.
AI in Practice
Students can use AI as a low-stakes thought partner while planning their own conference talking points or choice-board project, then bring a teacher or peer in for the real feedback that matters.
Research
Student-led learning not only enhances student engagement and autonomy, but also prepares them for real-world challenges by fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Kampala International University
Tool
AI Enabled Choice Board Builder
An online tool by CK-12 that creates multiple pathways to mastery with a curated grid of activities. Specify topic, grade level, and describe any goals or learning objectives you want to focus on.
Understanding by Design (UbD)
Curriculum Planning
UbD, also known as backward design, asks teachers to start with the end in mind. Identify desired understanding first, then the evidence that proves students got there, and finally plan the day-to-day lessons last. The process keeps units anchored to a clear purpose instead of a sequence of activities that may or may not add up to something.
AI in Practice
AI is a good thinking partner for the backward design habit itself, since it can push back when a proposed activity doesn’t actually align with the stated understanding.
Sample prompt: I’m using Understanding by Design to plan a unit. Here’s my Stage 1 thinking:
- Enduring understanding(s): [state what you want students to grasp long-term]
- Essential question(s): [list them]
- Key knowledge and skills: [list them]
Here’s my Stage 2 assessment: [describe the task, project, or test]
Here’s a learning activity I’m considering for Stage 3: [describe the activity]
Act as a critical friend checking backward design alignment, not as someone rewriting my plan.
Research
Multiple quasi-experimental studies found that students taught with the UbD model significantly outperformed peers taught with traditional planning approaches. Compiled UbD Research Studies, Jay McTighe
Tool
UbD Unit Template (Google Doc)
A three-stage planner covering desired results, acceptable evidence, and the learning plan.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Access & Inclusion
UDL asks teachers to plan for learning differences from the start rather than adding accommodations later. Built around three principles (multiple means of engagement, representation, and action or expression), it prioritizes flexibility. A lesson built with UDL in mind offers more than one way in, more than one way to show understanding, and more than one reason to care.
AI in Practice
A teacher can ask AI to take one reading passage or set of instructions and generate a simplified version, an audio script, and a visual summary in minutes, turning a single-format lesson into a UDL-aligned one without redesigning it from scratch.
Sample prompt: I’m going to give you a reading passage. Please help me turn it into three UDL-aligned formats for my [grade level] students:
- Simplified version – Rewrite the passage at a [grade level, e.g., 4th-grade] reading level. Keep the key vocabulary and content, but shorten sentences, define or replace difficult words, and add subheadings to break up the text.
- Audio script – Turn the original passage into a script written for read-aloud or text-to-speech, using natural spoken phrasing, brief pauses marked with “…”, and a warm, conversational tone appropriate for [grade level] students.
- Visual summary – Create an outline for a one-page visual summary (like an infographic or storyboard) that captures the main ideas. Include suggested section headers, 3-5 key points per section, and notes on where an image, icon, or diagram would help convey meaning.
Here is the passage: [paste text]
Research
A 2025 study of 2,473 learners across 87 institutions found that fully implementing all three UDL principles raised overall learner performance by 37.4%, with an even larger 42.8% gain among previously disengaged learners. Nature
Tool
A step-by-step process that supports educators in designing academically rigorous, inclusive, and engaging learning experiences.
Visible Thinking Routines
Metacognition
Developed by Harvard Project Zero, thinking routines are short, repeatable prompts, such as See-Think-Wonder or Think-Puzzle-Explore, that make a student’s reasoning visible to themselves, their peers, and their teacher. Used consistently, they shift a classroom’s culture from producing answers to examining how those answers were reached.
AI in Practice
AI can generate sentence starters or prompt cards, anchor charts, and sample routines to help students during instruction.
Sample prompt: I want to use the [routine name, e.g., “Claim-Support-Question”] visible thinking routine with my [grade level] class on the topic of [topic]. Please generate: (1) the discussion prompts or sentence starters for this routine adapted to the topic, (2) a simple anchor chart outline I could project or print, and (3) one example student response at a developing level and one at a strong level, so I can model expectations before students begin.
Research
Systems thinking-oriented visible thinking routines helped fifth grade students organize ideas, see relationships among system elements, and reflect on their own reasoning, while also boosting engagement and enjoyment. Journal of Pedagogical Research
Tool
Nineteen routines each organized by purpose and linked to additional information for how to introduce and use the routine in the classroom.