The most important goal of education is improving the quality of teaching. There are several modern teaching methods that can be used in teaching and learning. These methods are focused on students´ active work. In our project we studied some of these methods, for example problem – based learning, didactic games, methods “how to express the idea with a pencil“(mind maps, tasks), discussion (brainstorming, Philips 66, Hobo), brainstormig, heuristic method. The effectiveness, motivation and problems of these methods were tested during high school physics lessons in Olomouc and Skuteč. The methods were used in various classes by in-service teachers and by pre-graduated teachers. Outcomes of this reasearch are discussed in this paper.