AI Lesson Planning - Creating Lessons

Introduction

WHY Important

Lessen teacher workload and ensure that what the learner experiences aligns with the intended objectives.

WHAT Will Be Learned

The focus will be on:

Standards-based
Cross-curricular
Finding resources & Ideas

Using Generative AI to assist with designing lesson plans can be a huge time saver. This “Reflective Practices” table offers a variety of ideas and context for designing and revising lessons using generative AI that can lead to higher quality and diverse learning experiences that ultimately benefit the learners. Explore these ideas along a personal journey or in collaboration with a professional learning team. Try and adapt the ideas and prompts as they best benefit your work.

Tools (optional)

Examples of tools that may be useful for this task:

Reflective Practices

Reflective Practices
1.	How Generative AI Tools Assist With Lesson Planning, Edutopia., May 2024 (Article) Shares using ChatGPT, Magicschool.ai, and Canva to generate lesson ideas and draft plans. The author uses an 80/20 rule for saving time. AI does 80% by creating the initial draft. The teachers then review and revise for bias and alignment to their curriculum and students. Why Should I Read This? The article provides useful ideas for using AI tools through actual examples of lesson design.	What can you do first to prepare for using an AI tool to create a quality lesson? Ethical Use By conducting a thorough review of an AI draft for bias, accuracy, and alignment to your learners, we can best ensure quality. What are 1-2 other practices can you do to ensure that a lesson is quality and authentic? For example, what is the value of a teacher creating the first draft that is shared with AI?	Choose an existing lesson. Share in one of the tools in the article and generate alternative lessons with different activities. Generate three types of student-centered characteristics or activities, such as groups, choices, student-designed assignments, student-led protocols, etc. Input two of your choices into one of the tools from the article along with lesson outcomes and assessment to see what drafts of lesson steps are generated.
2.	Using ChatGPT to Support Student-Led Inquiry, Edutopia, October 2023 (Article) This article explains three approaches to using generative AI to create simulated scenarios, critical thinking through fact checking AI bias, and programming an expert to guide student inquiry on a topic. The author shares examples of actual prompts and results that can be adapted for different classes and grades. Why Should I Read This? The types of prompt-based activities shared can empower students to lead their learning for a lesson outcome and within an activity that has a specific outcome that teachers want to achieve. Include post-student reflections to gain maximum benefit from these ideas when implemented.	Based on the article’s three ideas, how would you rate them in order of benefit to the learning experiences of your students in your content area? Be able to explain the reasoning behind your order. Ethical Use When using with students an AI chatbox like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Pilot, what guidelines should you set to ensure appropriate use of the tool? For example, how might you structure the first experiences to ensure that students stay within the activity parameters, while you monitor their screens?	Based on completing the first reflection question, look at your top two options. Share an example for how you could use each idea. There can be two different examples to address each idea or one example that incorporates both. For one of the three ideas, revise or recreate a new prompt that meets your lesson needs. Attempt to include language where the AI chatbox must share the basis of its reasoning, such as 2-3 references.
3.	Teaching with AI, OpenAI, August 2023 (Article) This article by Open AI offers a concise overview of ways that generative Ai can be used by educators. It also includes an example transcript to model one example. Also, here is an article, 7 AI Tools That Help Teachers Work More Efficiently (Edutopia, October 2023 (Article)), that highlights these ideas by sharing a variety of tools. Why Should I Read This? These articles helps make the case for different ways of how we can use generative AI to support lesson planning.	Based on the 1st article, what is one suggestion that most resonates to positively impacting your work? What are two ways that the idea would make an important difference? Based on the supplemental article, how do the ideas and some of the tools reflect what is shared in the first article? What is a key takeaway? Ethical Use When using Generative AI or any tools that incorporate AI, why is it important to protect student information? What are 2-3 ways that you can ensure that student data is not shared in any AI tool?	Based on the ideas in the 1st article, how could you accomplish one of the suggestions into your classroom or workplace? Include an example. Choose one of the prompt examples based on their reflection of the listed ideas, copy and paste into your AI chat box of choice. Spend 20 minutes engaging in the dialog and consider the resulting work product that is created. Review the list of tools in the supplementary article. Choose one of the tools and spend 20 minutes exploring its use with needs for your classroom or workplace.

References

Guiding Reflection Questions

Suggested Action Steps

How Generative AI Tools Assist With Lesson Planning, Edutopia., May 2024 (Article)

Shares using ChatGPT, Magicschool.ai, and Canva to generate lesson ideas and draft plans. The author uses an 80/20 rule for saving time. AI does 80% by creating the initial draft. The teachers then review and revise for bias and alignment to their curriculum and students.

Why Should I Read This?

The article provides useful ideas for using AI tools through actual examples of lesson design.

What can you do first to prepare for using an AI tool to create a quality lesson?

Ethical Use

By conducting a thorough review of an AI draft for bias, accuracy, and alignment to your learners, we can best ensure quality. What are 1-2 other practices can you do to ensure that a lesson is quality and authentic? For example, what is the value of a teacher creating the first draft that is shared with AI?

Choose an existing lesson. Share in one of the tools in the article and generate alternative lessons with different activities.

Generate three types of student-centered characteristics or activities, such as groups, choices, student-designed assignments, student-led protocols, etc. Input two of your choices into one of the tools from the article along with lesson outcomes and assessment to see what drafts of lesson steps are generated.

Using ChatGPT to Support Student-Led Inquiry, Edutopia, October 2023 (Article)

This article explains three approaches to using generative AI to create simulated scenarios, critical thinking through fact checking AI bias, and programming an expert to guide student inquiry on a topic. The author shares examples of actual prompts and results that can be adapted for different classes and grades.

Why Should I Read This?

The types of prompt-based activities shared can empower students to lead their learning for a lesson outcome and within an activity that has a specific outcome that teachers want to achieve. Include post-student reflections to gain maximum benefit from these ideas when implemented.

Based on the article’s three ideas, how would you rate them in order of benefit to the learning experiences of your students in your content area? Be able to explain the reasoning behind your order.

Ethical Use

When using with students an AI chatbox like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Pilot, what guidelines should you set to ensure appropriate use of the tool? For example, how might you structure the first experiences to ensure that students stay within the activity parameters, while you monitor their screens?

Based on completing the first reflection question, look at your top two options. Share an example for how you could use each idea. There can be two different examples to address each idea or one example that incorporates both.

For one of the three ideas, revise or recreate a new prompt that meets your lesson needs. Attempt to include language where the AI chatbox must share the basis of its reasoning, such as 2-3 references.

Teaching with AI, OpenAI, August 2023 (Article)

This article by Open AI offers a concise overview of ways that generative Ai can be used by educators. It also includes an example transcript to model one example. Also, here is an article, 7 AI Tools That Help Teachers Work More Efficiently (Edutopia, October 2023 (Article)), that highlights these ideas by sharing a variety of tools.

Why Should I Read This?

These articles helps make the case for different ways of how we can use generative AI to support lesson planning.

Based on the 1st article, what is one suggestion that most resonates to positively impacting your work? What are two ways that the idea would make an important difference?

Based on the supplemental article, how do the ideas and some of the tools reflect what is shared in the first article? What is a key takeaway?

Ethical Use

When using Generative AI or any tools that incorporate AI, why is it important to protect student information? What are 2-3 ways that you can ensure that student data is not shared in any AI tool?

Based on the ideas in the 1st article, how could you accomplish one of the suggestions into your classroom or workplace? Include an example.

Choose one of the prompt examples based on their reflection of the listed ideas, copy and paste into your AI chat box of choice. Spend 20 minutes engaging in the dialog and consider the resulting work product that is created.

Review the list of tools in the supplementary article. Choose one of the tools and spend 20 minutes exploring its use with needs for your classroom or workplace.

AI Prompting Work Samples

Design or Automate

How can we generate activities for lessons that engage learners and align with learning objectives?

Use the following prompt in a Generative AI Chat Box of your choice to create a lesson plan draft that supports your work with students. Here is an example transcript using ChatGPT and a video walkthrough 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.

Prompt:

Act as a master teacher with lots of experience regarding student engagement and the Understanding By Design Framework by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins. You will help me generate lessons that align to the learning objectives and include student engagement. You will ask me a set of questions. Only ask one question at a time. Ask the next question after I respond to the current question. Here are the questions:

What is the grade and subject?
How long is the class?
What are the unit objectives?
What are the lesson objectives for just this lesson?
What is the lesson assessment? If I type: continue, that means that you will create the assessment.
What are the current lesson steps? If I type: continue, that means that you will create the lesson steps, including the time frame for completing each step within the class length indicated in question 2.
What context or considerations should influence the lesson, such as student strengths and/or gaps in knowledge or skills? If I type: continue, that means skip this question.

Once all questions are answered, create a lesson. Include the objectives, lesson steps with a short description for each, and an assessment. Add at the end an explanation of how the lesson ensures alignment to the learning objectives and promotes student engagement. Then ask me for any revisions to the lesson. Continue a cycle of making revisions and asking for more requests until I enter the word: complete. At that point, reprint the entire lesson plan, including answers to my original questions. Then prompt me for the next lesson to create.

Research Assistant

How can we research a variety of tools and strategies for consideration in lessons?

Use the following prompt in a Generative AI Chat Box of your choice to create a lesson plan draft that supports your work with students. Here is an example transcript using Copilott and a video walkthrough 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.Depending on the response, if the link does not work, copy and paste the reference title into a search engine to get the link or use a different AI Chat Box.

Prompt:

Act as a professional researcher. Ask me a series of questions to understand what information I need. Only ask one question at a time. Ask the next question after I respond to the current question. Here are the questions:

What is the grade or adult group of learners?
What is the subject being taught?
What are the topics that you want references and resources about? For example, student-led protocols for reading comprehension or discussion, differentiation, project-based learning, etc.

After all questions are answered, create a list of four references based on the shared information. They should be aligned to the question answers. References may include articles, books, videos, and/or podcasts. All references must be real, not made up. Include the following for each reference in the following format, not including text in the parenthesis:

Title:

URL link: (print the complete full url link)

Summary: (Include the main ideas of the resource and reference)

Once done, prompt me to ask for more references based on my answers to the questions. Also, prompt me to start a new research by typing the word: New or Start.