This paper reviews the teaching practice and textbook writing of the high-rise building structure course in Tsinghua University in the past 40 years. It mainly presents the effort in the course development and textbook writing in the past 20 years to reflect the talent cultivation featured with "deep foundation, practice training and innovation capability" and "three-pronged approach" of education that integrates the shaping of values, the cultivating of skills and the imparting of knowledge. The following aspects are included: (1) to reorganize the structure of the textbook to make it more consistent with the logic of structural design; (2) to highlight the basic concepts and design theories, and focus on teaching "living" and "transferable" knowledge; (3) to extend the class through the program-based calculation and design-type homework, thus effectively forming "dual wheel drive" in class and out of class; (4) to adopt the problem-oriented teaching in the introduction of the structural system innovation, for inspiring students’ innovative thinking.