Interactive Whiteboard in Teaching: 6 Classroom Templates and How to Run Each One

An interactive whiteboard in teaching works best when the board holds a structure the whole class fills in, rather than a slide the teacher presents. Six classroom templates cover most lessons: a KWL chart to open a topic, think-pair-share for discussion, the Frayer model for vocabulary, a jigsaw for group research, a concept map for review, and an exit ticket to close. Each one gives every student a place on the board and the teacher something concrete to read afterwards.

This guide is written for a secondary or upper-primary teacher, for instance a Year 8 science teacher running a hybrid lesson in which some students are in the room and some are at home, who wants every student to contribute to one shared board at the same time. It sets out the six templates, the origin of each, how to run each one in about ten minutes of lesson time, and what the research says about why the structure matters more than the screen.

Does an interactive whiteboard improve learning by itself?

No, and the research is clear on why. Glover and colleagues analysed 50 video-recorded lessons taught by successful secondary mathematics and modern languages teachers and sorted the practice they saw into three types, running along a spectrum of increasing interactivity. Their conclusion was that new technology alone cannot lead to enhanced learning; teachers also need to understand how approaches to interactive learning relate to conceptual and cognitive development in their subject.

That finding is the argument for templates. A template is interaction design written down in advance: it decides who writes where, in what order and for how long. The board then does what it is good at, which is letting twenty-five people contribute at once and keeping a record of what they said. The rest of this guide is a set of six such designs, each with a proven teaching method behind it.

The six classroom templates

Template	Best at	Lesson stage	Student action on the board	Time
KWL chart	Activating prior knowledge	Opening	Add notes to Know and Want columns, later Learned	10 min
Think-pair-share	Discussion from every student	Middle	Write a pair’s answer in a labelled box	8 min
Frayer model	Vocabulary depth	Middle	Fill four quadrants for one term	10 min
Jigsaw	Sharing research among groups	Middle	Each expert group fills its own section	20 min
Concept map review	Connecting ideas	Review	Add and link nodes	12 min
Exit ticket	Checking understanding	Close	One response each	4 min

1. KWL chart

A KWL chart has three columns: what students Know, what they Want to know, and what they Learned. Donna Ogle described the method in 1986 as a way of activating prior knowledge before a reading task and returning to it afterwards.

On a shared board, give each student a sticky note in the first two columns at the start of the lesson, in silence, for three minutes. Read the Want column aloud and cluster similar questions; those clusters become the lesson’s sections. At the end, students move or replace notes into the Learned column. The teacher’s reading takes thirty seconds: questions left in Want are tomorrow’s opening.

2. Think-pair-share

Think-pair-share asks every student to think alone, discuss with one partner, and then share with the class. Frank Lyman at the University of Maryland developed it in the early 1980s. Its value is that the quietest student has a partner to say the answer to before saying it to the room.

On the board, create one box per pair, labelled with the pair’s names, under the question. Students think for one minute, talk for two (on video breakouts or beside each other), and write the pair’s answer in their box. The teacher then reads three or four aloud. Because everything is on the board at once, no pair is skipped, which is the usual failure of cold-calling.

3. Frayer model

The Frayer model puts one vocabulary term in the centre of a four-quadrant diagram: definition, characteristics, examples and non-examples. Dorothy Frayer and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin developed it in the late 1960s.

The non-examples quadrant is the one that deepens understanding, because a student who can say what a term is not has drawn its boundary. Give each group a different term from the unit, one Frayer diagram per group on the same board, and let them fill it in for six minutes. When the groups present, the board becomes the class’s glossary for the unit and can be reopened before the test.

4. Jigsaw

In a jigsaw, each student becomes an expert on one part of a topic, teaches it to a mixed group, and the group assembles the whole. Elliot Aronson and his students devised the technique in Austin, Texas, in 1971 to reduce competition in newly desegregated classrooms.

Set up a board with one section per sub-topic. Expert groups research their sections and fill them in, with sources, for ten minutes. Then rearrange into mixed groups where each member reads out their section. A shared board suits this well because each expert section stays visible and editable to the other students, so a mixed group can find the reference again when they are assembling the whole picture.

5. Concept map review

A concept map is a diagram of nodes (ideas) and labelled links (relationships) that students build to show how a topic fits together. The evidence for it is among the strongest in this guide. Nesbit and Adesope’s meta-analysis of 55 studies, with 5,818 participants from Grade 4 to postsecondary level, found that using concept maps was associated with increased knowledge retention, and that the size of the effect depended on how the maps were used.

Run it as a review activity. Give the class twelve key terms from the unit as notes at the edge of the board, ask pairs to place them and draw labelled links, and have each pair add one link nobody else has drawn. The labels on the links, such as “causes” or “is an example of”, are where students show whether they understand the relationship, so insist on them. For templates of this shape, see our guide to concept map templates and the broader mind map template formats.

6. Exit ticket

An exit ticket is a short written response students give as the lesson ends, usually answering one question about what they learned or what is still unclear. It takes four minutes and gives the teacher a record of every student’s position rather than the three who put their hands up.

Make one box per student, or one shared board with a prompt: “One thing I can now do, one thing I still find hard.” Read the board after the lesson, not during it, and sort the notes into three piles: ready, nearly, and needs reteaching. That sort is tomorrow’s grouping.

How do you run these on an online interactive whiteboard?

Share the board link before the lesson, let every student edit, and keep the video call open so students can talk while they write. HuddleIQ is an online whiteboard with real-time collaboration, where cursors move and changes appear instantly, and built-in video conferencing, according to its live features page (checked on 25 October 2026). The same page lists polls and voting, a presentation mode, and 100+ templates across brainstorming, meetings, planning and education that can be customised or created from scratch. Our education page covers the classroom use in more detail.

The setup routine below works for any of the six templates, in a classroom or a hybrid lesson.

1. Build the template once in advance, with the headings and boxes in place and one example filled in. The example sets the expected length of answers.
2. Give students the link at the start of the lesson, with a rule such as “write in your own box only”.
3. State the time for each stage aloud and write it on the board.
4. Use the poll or vote feature when you need a fast read of the room, for example to ask which Want questions to answer first.
5. Keep the board after the lesson. A saved KWL or Frayer board is the class’s notes, and a saved exit ticket board is your assessment record.

How do you handle a hybrid class with one shared board?

Treat the board as the one place where in-room and remote students are equal, because on the board nobody is nearer the front. Project it for the room and have every student, including those in the room, add their own contribution from a device. That removes the common imbalance in a hybrid lesson, where the remote students watch the room talk to itself.

Two small rules help. Ask in-room pairs to write on the board before they speak, so remote students see the thinking at the same moment as the room hears it. And assign remote students into pairs with each other, or with an in-room partner on a call, for think-pair-share, so no one is left to pair with a screen. The board keeps the record either way, which also helps any student who misses the lesson and returns to the saved board a day later.

The Template-Fit Test: choosing the right one in 30 seconds

The Template-Fit Test is a framework we use to match a template to a lesson goal. Ask: what do I need from every student in the next ten minutes?

• If the answer is “what they already know”, use a KWL.
• If it is “an idea they have thought about with someone”, use think-pair-share.
• If it is “a precise meaning”, use the Frayer model.
• If it is “something they have researched and can explain”, use a jigsaw.
• If it is “how the pieces connect”, use a concept map.
• If it is “whether they got it”, use an exit ticket.

A single lesson usually needs two of these, one early and one late. The common pairing is a KWL at the start and an exit ticket at the end, with one of the middle three in between.

What goes wrong with classroom whiteboard templates?

The first problem is a blank board. A template with headings and one worked example is used far more readily than an empty canvas, because students copy the example’s level of detail.

The second is writing over each other. Giving every student or pair a named box removes the problem before it starts.

The third is treating the board as a presentation. If the teacher is the only person writing, you have bought a more expensive projector. The test is simple: at the end of ten minutes, is there something on the board in every student’s own words?

The fourth, and the one Glover’s lesson analysis points to, is using the technology without a plan for the interaction. Decide in advance who writes, when and why; that is what the template does.

Where to start

Choose one lesson this week and one template from the Template-Fit Test. Build the board in advance with a worked example, run it for the time stated in the table, and read the result afterwards. If you want a board to adapt, open one of the HuddleIQ templates and customise the headings to your unit. For ideas that suit group work more broadly, the online whiteboard hub has articles on virtual classrooms and collaborative learning.