Design principle of concrete structures is an important professional course of civil engineering. It has strong engineering concept and systemic scientific theory. To improve students’ analysis ability to meet the social demand, the teaching idea and teaching methods should be changed to adapt to the times. The course has the characteristics of many contents, covering a wide range, intensity experiences, multiple equations, many symbols, several regulations of structure and strong practicality. To realize the training targets, we presented teaching methods of heuristics, introduction, comparison and discussion based on our teaching experiences, which achieved good teaching effect.