Teacher Lessons & Activities
A collection of lessons and activities from Inspired Teaching to foster authentically engaging learning with students and deepen teachers' understanding of their role in the classroom.
Whether you teach early childhood or calculus, these award-winning lessons and activities—informed by 30 years of work with thousands of educators—authentically engage, spark curiosity, build community, and support academic success in your classroom. The teacher activities challenge you to shift your role from deliverer of information to Instigator of Thought, providing small steps with big payoff for reinvigorating your practice and rediscovering your why.
Graffiti Board
A Graffiti Board can strengthen community, elevate student voice, connect to content, and show students you care about what’s on their minds.
Emotion Continuum
Through this challenge, students build their vocabularies and build productive strategies for communicating feelings and needs to adults and to one another.
Don’t Speak: Snap Inspiration
This Snap Inspiration encourages teachers to let students take the lead in classroom conversations.
Ask “So What?”
Understanding—and being able to articulate to students—why a lesson’s content matters is an essential part of planning.
Mistakes Help Me Learn!
Human beings learn by doing and trying new things. When you try something for the first time, or even the 20th time, you might make a mistake. That’s okay.
Looping
The deceptively simple practice of “looping” – listening to understand, not just to respond, helps us get curious about other people’s perspectives and experiences – a critical skill for all members of a society.
Hot Takes: Listen, Learn, Respond
We can all use practice listening and responding to the opinions of others without rushing to judgment. This lively activity gives students practice with doing just that using low-stakes “takes”.
Imaging to Music
This activity invites participants to broaden their context about what it means to be a writer. It encourages growth through practice and self-management as ideas arise through the prompting of music.
Creating a Class Constitution
Engaging students in creating a class constitution has the double benefit of co-creating a classroom community and learning about the rights and responsibilities at the core of democracy.
The Art of Discipline
This activity invites students to redefine the concept of Discipline. In this redefinition, discipline is curiosity driven by focus and self-motivation – not compliance driven by punishment.
Operating Instructions
This activity invites students to consider what their own operating instructions might look like, and in reflecting on this they offer teachers a valuable guide to meeting student needs.
Moving Cargo
This activity captures a young child’s interest in moving vehicles as they use their body to demonstrate transportation, practice counting, and build fine motor skills.
