Fresh Approaches to Instructional Design

Most teachers have experienced those unforgettable moments when everything clicks. Students are fully engaged and the classroom hums with energy. Time flies. Everyone is learning, connecting, and creating. It’s working!

Then there are the other moments: confused looks, awkward silences, and an unmistakable, unsettled feeling. This is… not working.

Teaching is a highly creative profession. So, too, is instructional design. Finding the “magic ingredients” for developing dynamic lessons is an ongoing quest. The best-crafted lessons are a balance of many factors, including the curriculum, classroom composition, and resource availability, as well as a teacher’s personal style.

To simplify and energize instructional design, I’ve developed three powerful lenses that guide the process. These lenses are the result of 20-plus years of teaching experience at the K–8 level, and multiple collaborative opportunities with my colleagues as an elementary teacher librarian. They have consistently brought creativity and depth to my classroom and library projects. The lenses are the following: 

1. Design a scenario
2. Seek partnerships
3. Lead with the outcome

Below, I’ve detailed how to approach each lens. My overarching advice is to start small and try out the lens that resonates best with your personal teaching style. Work with colleagues in the process, propose a lens to your grade team, and explore how you might cocreate an engaging learning experience for your students.

Lens 1: Design a Scenario

Guiding question: How can I design an attention-grabbing scenario that motivates students to develop a deep understanding of content goals?

How it works: Rather than opening with direct instruction, the teacher begins with a thought-provoking scenario that encourages urgency and purpose. The scenario acts as a catalyst for inquiry and learning. Students must seek knowledge and apply it in context, just as professionals do in the real world.

This lens draws on elements of project-based learning and encourages higher-order thinking. Students might step into roles such as community leaders, medical experts, or government officials—positions that require decision-making, collaboration, and research. When students are seen as valued stakeholders solving real or simulated problems, the results are especially powerful.

Lens 1 in action: For a fifth-grade class, my colleague and I designed a science project with the content goal of teaching students the structure, basic function, and medical conditions of various human body systems. We framed this project around a compelling scenario: A state-of-the-art hospital was being built nearby, and it needed expert advice on which body system should have its own dedicated wing for cutting-edge patient care and research.

My colleague and I played the roles of hospital designers, and we sent the students a formal letter requesting proposals. Working in teams, students became specialists in a specific body system—they explored its function and the diseases and environmental factors that affect it. They even considered how modern technology helps or hinders their system.

Each team delivered a passionate pitch to convince us that their system was the most deserving of a dedicated research space. Students showed up in lab coats, built full-body models, and gave persuasive presentations. It was some of the most energized and expert-level engagement we’d ever seen!

Lens 2: Seek Partnerships

Guiding question: What community partnerships can I build to deepen my students’ understanding of content goals?

How it works: Teachers adopt a community-building mindset and seek opportunities within the curriculum to connect students with people beyond their immediate environment. These partnerships—local, national, or international—allow students to see the world through other perspectives, fostering empathy, curiosity, and a deeper sense of humanity.

Lens 2 in action: I wanted my third-grade students to develop an understanding of what it’s like to live, work, and play in regions across the province of Ontario. At the same time, my colleagues and I were exploring different forms of writing as part of our language arts goals for our classes. We wanted to design a hands-on way for our students to reach out to multiple communities through writing.

That’s when an idea emerged: Have each of our approximately 60 students write a postcard, and send the postcards to schools across the province as an invitation to participate in a learning exchange.

The students were immediately hooked. They carefully crafted postcards with beautiful messages and personalized pictures. The authentic purpose of the assignment inspired high-quality research and thoughtful composition. Each student described two or three (vetted) ways they live and play in our community and also included curriculum-oriented questions designed to initiate dialogue. Together, we plotted out their postcard destinations by placing pins on a shared map.

The mystery of whether we would hear back created a buzz of anticipation, but that was nothing compared with the excitement on the day we received our first thick manila envelope addressed to our third-grade students. It worked! In all, we heard back from three different schools, each of which embraced the learning as a reciprocal opportunity.

Lens 3: Lead with the Outcome

Guiding question: How can I design a task where students need to apply knowledge they haven’t been directly taught, prompting them to seek that knowledge themselves?

How it works: This is similar to the “design a scenario” lens, but with a key distinction: It starts with the end task. Instead of front-loading content, teachers ask students to complete an assignment based on materials they haven’t learned yet. The gap creates urgency. In order to succeed, students must inquire about the necessary knowledge or discover it themselves.

Leading with the outcome works particularly well when students are aware that the required knowledge is already in the room, just untapped. When designed intentionally, this approach empowers students and repositions learning as a problem to solve, not a set of facts to memorize.

Lens 3 in action: For an eighth-grade music class, I wanted students to review their knowledge of treble clef notation and sheet music reading. I had some reluctant musicians, and I knew that traditional theory lessons wouldn’t be engaging enough.

Instead, I introduced the “mystery melody” challenge. Students entered the classroom and spotted xylophones, an unnamed piece of sheet music on their desks, and a challenge projected on the screen. The challenge was as follows:

1. Identify the title of the mystery melody.
2. Name the composer.
3. Play the melody on the xylophone.
4. Bonus: figure out the year the melody was composed.

Clues and theory tips were revealed every three-and-a-half minutes. I mixed the groups to ensure that each one had a student with basic notation skills who could shine, and I chose a very common classical piece with a memorable melody: “Ode to Joy,” by Beethoven.

The result? Excitement, teamwork, and an urgent need to learn music notation. The students requested a second mystery melody, and I even had a formerly reluctant musician call it the “best music class ever.”