Software development is the core activity performed within software engineering. The Unified Modelling Language (UML) has become a de facto standard language for expressing artefacts used and produced within software development process. As a result of that there is an expanding activity related to teaching the process of software development and the language at both higher education institutions and in software industry. The aim of the education in UML is to prepare software developers to effectively use UML and modelling at their work. Therefore guidelines on a proper way of teaching and learning processes and notations are foreseen. The paper elaborates on experiences and lessons learned from the course on UML based software development delivered as part of software engineering curriculum. In the paper we identify a set of best practices for teaching modelling and UML. The best practices are based on the experiences gathered from multiple course deliveries over a period of five years.