Streamline Planning with AI: Craft Custom Lessons
by OTAN SME Susan Coulter
Every district has their own format for writing lesson plans, and I remember it being a manual and time-intensive process. Typically, this involves crafting lesson objectives, carefully choosing, arranging, and presenting different activities to address a particular learning goal. The conventional approach, while tried-and-true, can be laborious and may not always adapt seamlessly to the diverse learning styles within a classroom.
AI, or artificial intelligence, is the wizardry that allows machines to learn, adapt, and perform tasks without explicit programming. In education, AI is like a tech-savvy tutor, bringing innovative solutions to the classroom. It analyzes data to personalize learning experiences, making lessons as unique as each student. AI helps educators create a dynamic and tailored educational journey. It's not just about fancy tech; it's about making learning more engaging, efficient, and personalized for everyone in the classroom.
The California Adult Education Digital Learning Guidance was developed by OTAN on behalf of the California Department of Education and serves as a practical resource for adult educators. Chapter 4, titled “Designing Flexible Learning Experiences”, introduces different strategies for designing flexible digital learning experiences. With AI, you are the designer or prompt engineer. AI can create interesting and effective lesson plans and personalize the learning experience for individual students given clear and precise prompts.
Lesson Plan Prompts
There are many different prompt frameworks. In the Open Prompt Book from CampGPT, they use the RACEF prompt framework, which is Role, Action, Context, Example, Format.
There's another AI prompting framework known as RICCE, outlined by Daragh Walsh in his YouTube videos. This framework breaks down into Role, Instructions, Context, Constraints, and Examples. While both prompt frameworks—RACEF and RICCE—serve as general structures for guiding AI responses, our attention here will be on the specific requirements for lesson planning and the prompts necessary for generating comprehensive lesson plans.
- Begin by defining the author's identity and role for AI. Assigning a role provides a distinct personality or persona, creating a foundation before outlining the specific task or action at hand.
Role: You are a curriculum expert as well as an experienced adult education teacher. - Next, we need to state the action or task you want AI to do.
Action/task: Create a student-centered lesson plan for Adult Basic Education students on fractions. - Context in an AI prompt refers to any extra details or information that the AI requires to enhance its understanding of the task you want it to perform.
Context: Our school is preparing for a WASC visitation, and this lesson needs to be engaging and focused on the learning goal. - What kind of a lesson is this: [Introductory, Review, Practice lesson?]
Level: This is an introductory lesson. - How much time have you set aside for this lesson?
Time allotted: This lesson should take approximately 60 minutes to complete. - Is there a specific standard or learning goal you want this lesson to cover?
Standards/Learning Goal: Common Core State Standard 3.NF.1-3d - Develop understanding of fractions as numbers. - This is the fun part of the lesson plan. What kind of activities do you want to include such as collaborative activity, independent work time, pair-share, hands-on, class discussion, interactive technology use, role-playing, debates, peer teaching, or a problem-solving activity.?
Activities to Include: Include a collaborative activity and interactive technology use. Use Math Games to reinforce fraction skills. - Optional Tools/Technology: There are 6 computers in the classroom.
- Accommodations: Include accommodations for hearing impaired students.
- The format is one of the most important elements. Do you want a detailed outline, a table, or a timeline of each step or perhaps a lesson plan in a particular format such as WIPPEA.
Format:Format this lesson with a Warmup, Introduction, Presentation, Practice, Evaluation, and Application. Include details of each step including time requirements.
While crafting your lesson plan, it's not required to incorporate all the provided prompts above. Nevertheless, providing as much detail as possible to your AI platform, it will likely yield better outcomes. If a particular section doesn't meet your preferences, feel free to instruct the AI to rewrite it. You also have the flexibility to request a complete rewrite of the entire lesson plan. Your level of input and customization will play a crucial role in refining the results to meet your specific needs.
Free Generative AI Platforms
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is one of the most popular AI platforms. It is designed to understand and generate human-like text based on the input it receives. It excels at understanding context and providing relevant responses; however, it may not have the latest information on recent details or events due to its last training cut-off in January 2022. Also, ChatGPT might exhibit bias in its response, so it is something you will want to be aware of and check for in AI’s responses. Also, responses may generate information or content that is not accurate, reliable, or based on real-world facts. These instances are referred to as “hallucinations”" and that is why human judgement and verification are crucial.
OpenAI provides two editions of ChatGPT: ChatGPT 3.5, available for free, and ChatGPT 4.0, which comes with a monthly subscription fee of $20.00. The paid version includes enhanced search capabilities, offering more comprehensive results.
Additionally, subscribers gain access to supplementary tools such as DALL-E, Browsing, Advanced Data Analysis, and others. DALL-E utilizes AI to generate detailed and descriptive images.
Signing Up for a Free ChatGPT Account
Signing up for a free account is quick and easy, especially if you use your Google, Microsoft, or Apple account.
- Go to https://chat.openai.com/auth/login
- Select Sign up on the right-hand side.
- Create an account by entering your email address or by using your Google, Microsoft, or Apple account.
Located at the base of the image is a black arrow, serving as the point where you interact with ChatGPT by inputting your messages. This is the space where you initiate and guide the conversation with your prompts. Envision ChatGPT as your dedicated personal assistant. Make it a point to clearly communicate your preferences and feedback regarding the lesson plan, specifying both what you appreciate and what you find less favorable. Your input is instrumental in refining the learning experience to align with your preferences.
When you're prepared to begin a new lesson plan or talk with ChatGPT, click "New chat" in the upper left-hand corner. Additionally, you can manage your conversation by selecting the three dots adjacent to the chat heading in the left panel. This allows you to share a link to the conversation, rename it for easier identification, or delete it if needed. Renaming it can facilitate quick retrieval if you wish to revisit it later.
Following your response, four options are presented. The initial option enables you to copy the response to your clipboard for easy pasting into documents or other platforms. The subsequent two options allow you to categorize the response as either a Good Response or a Bad Response. Subsequently, you will be prompted to specify what aspects you appreciated in the response and, conversely, what elements you did not find satisfactory. The final option is to Regenerate the response.
In the upper right-hand side is an icon that allows you to share the link to the chat. You can enter your name or share it anonymously. Anyone with the link will be able to view the shared chat.
Designed to comprehend and produce text in a human-like manner based on its input, ChatGPT proves user-friendly. I found it to be easy to navigate, and it demonstrated the ability to effectively craft detailed and descriptive lesson plans.
Google’s Bard AI Platform
Google’s Bard is also capable of generating human-quality text and answering your questions in an informative way; however, Bard is trained on a massive dataset of text and codes that includes scientific papers, math expressions, and source code. The Bard platform is similar to ChatGPT; however, it offers more options, such as Google Search to check results, and Google applications. Like ChatGPT it is also prone to factual errors and hallucinations and may at times represent bias. All responses need to be carefully reviewed.
I encountered an issue when attempting to copy and paste prompts from Microsoft Word into Bard. The content pasted as an image, with a warning stating it "contains text that is sexually suggestive and exploits, abuses, or endangers children." However, I discovered a workaround by first pasting my prompt into Google Docs and then copying and pasting it into Bard, which proved to be effective. This appears to be an occasional formatting issue in Word that does not occur consistently. If you primarily use Google Apps, Bard by Google presents a wealth of features and benefits.
Signing Up for a Free Bard Account
- Go to https://bard.google.com
- Select Sign In found in the upper right-hand corner or on the left-hand side.
- You will need a Google account and password to sign in.
Bard is like ChatGPT with a side bar listing recent chats. The three vertical dots are Pin, Rename, and Delete.
Bard includes extensions and integration with Google Apps, accessible from the upper right-hand corner of your screen. The initial icons feature Bard Activity and Extensions. Among the extensions are Google Flights, Google Hotels, Google Maps, Google Workspace, and YouTube, which you can activate as needed.
Following these, the Help section provides assistance on Privacy, Updates, Help, and Frequently Asked Questions. The Settings gear permits customization options such as using a dark theme, responding once complete, and managing your public links. Adjacent to this, the Google waffle displays all your Google applications seamlessly within the Bard platform.
The prompt field is located at the bottom of the screen and states, “Enter a prompt here.” There is a microphone for vocalizing your prompt and you can upload an image. On the left of the prompt field is a small icon that allows you to upload an image.
Bard’s response is very comprehensive and gives three additional responses when you select View other drafts. Bard will even read the response by selecting the speaker icon to the right of the drafts.
The icons located at the bottom of Bard's response enable you to categorize it as either a Good or Bad response. Following this, the next icon is for modifying the response. Within this option, you can request a Shorter, Longer, Simpler, More casual, or More professional response. Google Search functionality is also accessible to verify the accuracy of the response. Additionally, the three vertical dots provide options to Copy the response or Report a legal issue.
Sample Lesson Plan Prompts entered in AI:
The following Lesson Plan Prompts were entered into ChatGPT with this response.
The following Lesson Plan Prompts were also entered in Bard with this response.
This is information on Lesson Plan Prompts to help you design engaging lessons.
Role: You are a curriculum expert as well as an experienced adult education teacher.
Action/task: Create a student-centered lesson plan for Adult Basic Education students on fractions.
Context: Our school is preparing for a WASC visitation, and this lesson needs to be engaging and focused on the learning goal.
Level: This is an introductory lesson.
Time allotted: This lesson should take approximately 60 minutes to complete.
Standards: Common Core State Standard 3.NF.1-3d - Develop understanding of fractions as numbers.
Activities to Include: Include a collaborative activity and interactive technology use.
Tools/Technology: Integrate the following tools in the lesson: Interactive smartboard. Use Math Games to reinforce fraction skills.
Optional Tools/Technology: There are 6 computers in the classroom.
Accommodations: Include accommodations for hearing impaired students.
Format: Format this lesson with a Warmup, Introduction, Presentation, Practice, Evaluation, and Application.
Create your own personalized lesson plans.
Review the Lesson Plan Prompts and select those that align with the requirements of your classroom. While some prompts may remain consistent, others may need to be excluded. By customizing the prompts, you can enhance engagement, efficiency, and personalization for everyone in the classroom.