AI Assistant - Differentiation
Introduction
WHY Important
Meeting the academic needs of all learners is the focus for education. An important goal for all educators is to strive for a year-plus growth for “each” learner. Support to accomplish meeting wide-ranging needs is through Differentiation. Generative AI can assist with this process.
WHAT Will Be Learned
The focus will be on:
- Explore how to leverage prompts to evaluate existing lessons
- Generate different activities that support diverse learners, including automation of work.
- Gather more understanding for how generative AI can support meeting different and specialized needs of learners.
Generative AI is proving to be an able assistant with supporting educators and students for developing activities and structures that aid learning experiences. Explore a variety of ways to support each learner, from those who struggle to meet academic expectations to those who consistently exceed curriculum outcomes and need appropriate challenge.
Tools (optional)
Examples of tools that may be useful for this task:
Reflective Practices
Reflective Practices | |||
|---|---|---|---|
References | Guiding Reflection Questions | Suggested Action Steps | |
1. | 5 Ways to Use AI Tools to Meet Students’ Needs, Edutopia, June 2023 (Article) This article offers 5 ideas for differentiating learning experiences, including creating materials, representing multiple means of representation, brainstorming alternative and authentic assessments, breaking down complex and abstract skills, and offering different ways to teach concepts. Why Should I Read This? Combined with student data and a clear understanding of the lesson objectives, the suggested ideas can be transformed into activities that could meet the needs of each learner. | How can I differentiate learning that is effective and gives me more time with my students? Ethical Use While saving time to meet and support students is helpful, be careful to ensure that the tasks provided through AI actually support the learning outcomes, and do not just fill time. | Choose one of the 5 suggested ideas and collect an existing lesson. Use an AI tool to read the lesson or activity, and then generate ideas or content. |
2. | Using AI to Enhance Universal Design for Learning. Edutopia, April 2024 (Article) Explores how AI can support different aspects of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Why Should I Read This? If you use UDL as your framework for learning experiences to best meet student needs, then this article offers rich insights into areas that AI can have an impact, along with suggested tools. | How can I design a learning environment that best ensures accessible and inclusive access to resources and structures for learning? Ethical Use When personalizing learning through UDL, student data is important. However, such data should not be included in AI if it is not private or can be accessed by any unapproved third party. | Identify an area in your UDL planning that you want to generate ideas or evaluate your existing plan. Using the suggestions from the article, create and use a prompt that supports your chosen UDL area. |
3. | Using AI in the Classroom: Tips and Tricks From Two Teachers, Education Week, January 2024 (Video - 3:53) This video shares a variety of examples for how generative AI can aid teachers in designing activities that serve different learning needs. Why Should I Read This? The video offers many ideas for areas of instruction that AI can assist with. Take any idea, combined with a good AI prompt, and you can impact your lesson planning to meet learner needs. | What are different ways that AI can save me time with planning differentiated instruction? Ethical Use When automating or saving time in generating differentiation activities, it’s important to keep the end learning objective in mind to best ensure the expected academic outcomes. | Based on the suggested ideas shared in the video, choose one and craft instructions for AI to generate ideas or make suggestions for revising a lesson step. |
AI Prompting Work Samples
How can we craft a lesson that intentionally differentiates activities in a lesson to meet the needs of each learner?
Copy and paste the following prompt into a Generative AI Chatbox. Use it to explore options for differentiation of your lesson. This is based on the provided Differentiation Planning Guide. Here is an example transcript using ChatGPT and a related recording for your review only if you would prefer seeing one before creating your own. Free and paid versions of generative AI chat boxes may require different levels of prompting to complete the work. Both will work. Go here for a complete list of transcripts.
Design
Prompt:
Based on the work by John McCarthy, author of So All Can Learn: a practical guide to differentiation and Carol Ann Tomlinson about Differentiated Instruction, help me implement intentional differentiation into my lesson. You will prompt me for the following information by asking me each question only after I've answered the previous question:
What is the grade level and subject?
How long is the class period?
What is the lesson objective(s)?
Based on the lesson objectives, list the main concepts and skills that students will learn.
What is the lesson assessment?
List the activity steps that make up the lesson. Number each activity in order of implementation.
List the lesson steps (number) that you want to intentionally differentiate. These lesson steps will be the only ones revised. Or, if no preference enter: Continue.
Identify which of the differentiation elements you want to use. Include as many as you want: A) Readiness, B) Interests, C) Learning Preferences.
Prompt me to share any additional information or context about the students that could impact Differentiation. For example, any life experiences that students have that could benefit learning and any areas of academic challenge that needs to be overcome. I will share information or enter: continue.
Based on the provided information, show a revised list of the lesson steps, including differentiation of activities. Beneath the list, provide a rationale for why and how the chosen differentiation elements were used.
Prompt me for any change requests and additional differentiation for any lesson step, or to enter: Continue. If Continue is used, create the final lesson plan, including answers to the initial questions you asked. Include all added differentiation to the revised lesson steps.
Then, prompt me for the next lesson plan.
Automate
There are often a range of reading levels inside a classroom of students. Generative AI can aid in transforming written instructions, explanations, and other readings into different reading levels. Depending on the tool and level of access, AI can either read certain uploaded document file types or content that is pasted into the web text box. Once the conversion is done, it’s important to review the content to ensure that the information remains accurate and aligned to expected outcomes.
Here is a sample text you can try, revise, or be inspired to create your own. Whichever version you choose, try it in an AI tool of your choice.
Example prompt:
Read the following uploaded document. Summarize the main ideas. Next, rewrite it in language for 5th grade reading level.
(Note: The statement, “Summarize the main ideas” helps verify that AI understands what it’s about to rewrite into a different reading level.)