LESSON PLANNING WITH AI: SAVE TIME, KEEP THE QUALITY

Remember Kodak’s slogan, ‘You Press the Button, We Do the Rest’? Kodak’s goal was to let amateurs take pictures without worrying about the technicalities. The process was simple: customers simply took their pictures, sent their cameras to the Kodak factory, and the factory – professionals – handled all the technical work, returning the finished prints. This reminds me of today’s AI-powered lesson planning apps for teachers. You input the basic data about your class (‘press the button’), and the LLM generates a lesson plan (‘does the rest’). But in our case, it’s professionals – teachers – who ‘press the button’, while the technical details are handled by… well, we don’t really know by whom, likely by some developer team. Are they experienced teachers? What pedagogy are they using? Or is it just an algorithm making guesses?

It’s a game of chance.

Sometimes, the LLM might generate something you would probably create yourself if you had more time, when the stars (*algorithms) align and the developer happens to be an experienced language teacher who understands both AI and coding. However, even in that scenario, the chances of getting something usable straight away are still quite low.

Teaching is an authentic and unique experience.

In most cases, once the initial ‘wow’ from the speed wears off, you’ll find yourself with the most average of the average lesson plans. Sure, it’s something you could submit to the supervisor for formal checks as proof of being a ‘busy bee’ (which is where AI is indeed a great time saver). But is it good enough for actual teaching? Well, maybe after you spend quite a bit of time revising and making it relevant for your learners. This includes a long list of considerations: reflecting on what they already know and their interests to help them connect with the material, previous lessons, potential challenges and how and where to provide scaffolding, adding activities for automaticity (overlearning), and figuring out how to differentiate on the fly if some learners struggle, and planning some activities for early finishers, and… well, you know the drill. Oh, and let’s not forget, the lesson has been rescheduled for Monday morning, so you’ll also need something to keep them awake! Now, try automating that.

So, (how) can we save time on lesson prep with AI and keep good quality?

It’s possible to save time with AI while keeping good quality, as long as we don’t try to switch roles with the AI and instead handle the ‘technical part’ ourselves.

Plan your plan

Write a brief outline of your lesson plan with the key parts/stages. 

lesson plan outline

Then, take a snapshot of your outline, and ask your LLM or LLM-powered chatbot to expand on it. Be sure to include additional details in the prompt, like proficiency level, topic, skills in focus, learning outcomes, learners’ interests, etc., all those variables that you keep in mind when planning your lesson.

Now the part where you can save time – ask for two or three options for each part. This way, you’ll save time on brainstorming and have more choices at hand. 

GPT4

If you use platforms like Not Diamond or You.com, you can have several models generate output, giving you more ideas and options to build on.

This way, you ‘hold the chalk and run the show’ – you’re guiding the model, not the other way around. 

*For the pre-watching stage, I chose to use a multimodal activity I designed some time ago (see WHAT DO YOUR FLIMBIES SAY ABOUT THAT?), where students reconstruct the story using text and visual clues, now with added sound effects.

The ELT blogosphere is full of great materials and activities, so it’s always worth checking out ELT blogs – you never know what gems you might find. While it may take a bit of time in the short term, it will pay off in the long run when you find activities you’ll reuse again and again.

This approach works well when you need to provide extended lesson plans that follow a specific format. The process is the same: make an outline and give the AI a template to fill in (see the Anatomy of a ChatGPT Prompt for Lesson Planning in the ChatGPT & ITS USES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING: WEBINAR WITH SCOTT THORNBURY, PRESENTATION SLIDES, PROMPTS, LINKS & MORE).

A more effective way to use AI for lesson prep is to create your own GPT/app to fit your own workflow and reference sources. But that’s a topic for another post.

Do you have any tips for saving time on lesson prep with AI that you’d like to share?

Happy teaching!

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