AI in the Classroom

Practical workflows for lesson planning, differentiation, feedback, and student-facing tasks.

This module covers the teaching tasks where AI delivers the most consistent time saving. Each workflow below explains what to give the AI, what to expect back, and what you still need to do yourself.

Lesson planning and preparation

Lesson plan from scratch

Give the AI your subject, year group, topic, duration, and any specific requirements. Ask for objectives, a starter, main activity, plenary, and suggested questions. You review and adjust — the AI handles the first draft.

Create a 50-minute lesson plan for Year 9 [subject] on [topic]. Include three learning objectives written as "students will be able to…", a 10-minute retrieval starter, a main activity with timings, and a plenary. Suggest three questions I can ask during the lesson to check understanding.

Retrieval practice questions

Give the AI a topic or set of lesson notes. Ask for questions at a specific difficulty level. Request an answer key alongside.

Create 10 retrieval practice questions on [topic] for Year [X] students who covered this topic two weeks ago. Include a mix of recall, application, and one slightly harder inference question. Provide an answer key.

Differentiation

Paste in your main activity or explanation. Ask the AI to produce a scaffolded support version and a stretch extension alongside the original. Never include student names.

Here is my main activity for Year [X] [subject]: [paste activity]. Rewrite it at two additional levels: one with more scaffolding (sentence starters, partially completed examples), and one extension version with an additional challenge for students who finish early.

Assessment and feedback

Feedback comment bank

Give the AI your mark scheme or success criteria and the level of the work. Ask for a bank of feedback comments you can adapt. Never paste in student work with names attached.

Based on this mark scheme: [paste mark scheme], write 8 feedback comments for work at the [expected / exceeding] standard. Each comment should identify one strength, one area to develop, and one specific next step. Vary the sentence starters.

Knowledge organiser

Give the AI your topic and year group. Ask for key vocabulary, key facts, and key people or dates organised ready to print.

Create a knowledge organiser for Year [X] [subject] on [topic]. Include: 10 key vocabulary terms with definitions, 8 key facts students must know, and [a timeline / key people / key equations] relevant to this topic. Format it so it could be printed on one side of A4.

Parent and carer communications

Parent email

Describe the situation in general terms. Ask for a draft in the appropriate tone. Fill in any real names only after copying the draft out of the AI tool — never enter them into the prompt itself.

Write a parent email about [the upcoming assessment / a student making excellent progress / a concern about engagement]. Tone: warm and professional. Keep it under 150 words. Use "Dear Parent or Carer" as the opening. I will personalise the name myself.

You are still the teacher. AI produces the first draft in seconds — but you bring the knowledge of your students, the understanding of what they already know, and the professional judgement to edit the output until it is genuinely right for your class.

What AI cannot do in the classroom

Cannot replace

Knowing your specific students and their history
Making safeguarding or pastoral judgements
Assessing spoken contributions or practical work
Building relationships that make students feel safe to try
Guaranteeing factual accuracy — always check subject content

Can help with

First drafts of any written resource
Generating question sets and quiz banks
Rephrasing content at different reading levels
Drafting parent and carer communications
Producing structured feedback templates

Knowledge check

A colleague pastes a student's full essay including their name into an AI tool and asks for feedback. What is the main concern?

Correct. Never paste named student work into any AI tool. Instead, describe the work in general terms: "a student who has argued the main point clearly but not supported it with evidence."

Not quite. The key concern is data protection — pasting a named student's work into an AI tool shares their personally identifiable information with a third-party system without consent. Always anonymise first.