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I’m a middle school teacher. The following is an activity for my class. Suggest ways to add differentiation to the following activity for students who finish quickly:
Binary Treasure Hunt: Cracking the Code to Hidden Messages!
Time: 30 minutes
Materials:
Whiteboard or projector
Markers or pens
Handouts with different binary-coded messages for each group (provided below)
Chart with binary values (0s and 1s) and corresponding letters (optional)
Learning Objectives:
Understand the basics of binary code and its role in computers.
Activity: Briefly explain that computers understand information as 0s and 1s, called binary code. Today, the students will become code detectives using a chart to translate secret messages hidden in binary! Split the class into small groups of 2-3 students. Each group receives a different binary-coded message and a chart. With the chart, students work together to translate each binary digit (0 or 1) into letters, forming a hidden message. Encourage teamwork and creative thinking! When done, each group shares their decoded message and explains their thought process.
Class communications
Use AI tools to generate a personalized and informative email to families, a club meeting agenda, a morning announcement, a helpful reminder, or an entertaining newsletter — in minutes. AI adapts to your desired tone, ensuring your message is received as you intend.
Try it out with this sample prompt:
Prompt:
Write a short morning announcement reminding 7th graders to bring a bag lunch for tomorrow’s field trip to the Botanical Gardens.
Relevant and fun materials
With AI’s creative input, you can add real-life examples to make math worksheets more fun, transform a science experiment, or sneak an element of surprise into a reading assignment. AI tools can suggest all kinds of ways to keep students interested and excited to learn.
Try it out with this sample prompt:
Prompt:
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I am an English teacher. Here is a reading assignment for my 11th graders. Enhance it to include inclusive, classroom appropriate examples, such as by asking students to create a review of the poem for a teen literary magazine:
Text Analysis: Exposing Irony in a Poem
Choose a short poem with significant use of irony. It could be verbal irony (the speaker says one thing but means the opposite), situational irony (a surprise twist in the plot), or dramatic irony (when the reader knows something that the characters do not).
Materials: Pen/pencil, paper, access to the poem.
Instructions:
Ask students to read the poem carefully twice. Underline any statements, descriptions, or situations that strike them as ironic or contradictory.
Identify the type of irony used: Verbal (word meaning vs. context), situational (unexpected outcome), or dramatic (audience knows more than characters).
Analyze the effect of irony: How does it contribute to the meaning, tone, or mood of the poem? Does it add humor, shock, or deeper understanding?
Choose 2-3 specific examples of irony and explain their impact: Briefly quote the lines and analyze how the literal meaning versus the intended meaning creates irony.
Consider the speaker’s perspective: How does the use of irony reflect the speaker’s awareness, intentions, or emotions?
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Assessment assistant
Develop dynamic quizzes, worksheets, and rubrics with AI-powered templates and prompts. You can create multiple versions of assessments of varied difficulty levels and formats to go beyond traditional tests and provide additional opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding.
Try it out with this sample prompt:
Prompt:
| I am a sixth-grade math teacher. Create 1 fun and realistic word problem for 11-year-old students. The word problem must multiply 2-digit numbers and 3-digit numbers together, for example: 24 x 322 or 14 x 556. |
Reading level evaluation
Perform quick readability and accessibility checks to help ensure class content will be understood. AI tools offer specific adjustments to make your text more approachable, such as revising sentence structure, using simpler vocabulary, and proposing alternative content formats.
Try it out with this sample prompt:
Prompt:
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Review this worksheet and point out areas where the writing can be simplified in order to ensure the reading level is appropriate for my 10th graders:
Back to the Future: Forecasting the Impact of Technological Advancements
Time: 20 minutes
Topic: Social Studies – Future Studies
Instructions:
First, assess the landscape of prevalent technological advancements, focusing on their societal and individual impact. Identify dominant technological advancements permeating various facets of human experience, including locomotion, communication, entertainment, and the labor landscape. Then, imagine you’re a time traveler visiting the year 2050. What singular technological advancement resonates with you? Describe it in detail, considering its function and performing a brief impact analysis. Analyze the potential positive and negative impacts of this advancement. How might it affect society, the environment, and individuals? Based on your exploration, articulate crucial considerations for the responsible development and implementation of future technologies. Focus on ethical frameworks, inclusivity, and potential unintended consequences.
Insightful summaries
Develop a concise overview of a complex subject to improve student comprehension, highlight key points, and provide a framework for understanding. GenAI helps elucidate challenging concepts, making tough topics more accessible for students.
Try it out with this sample prompt:
Prompt:
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I am a high school economics teacher. Provide a simple and accessible summary of macroeconomics for my students. Clearly explain how this branch of economics encompasses how entire economies function.
As your classroom partner, an AI tool can help you find fresh ideas, research exciting new topics, create compelling presentations, translate languages, and so much more. But always remember you’re the expert! Be sure to evaluate outputs to confirm they align with your own understanding. For instance, in the case of enhancing a lesson plan, you, as the educator, would ensure that the output suggested an alternative activity that is at an appropriate academic level for those students who may have finished the original activity too quickly. You would also ensure that the output included sufficient instruction and resources for students to complete the activity successfully.
Anatomy of a prompt
It’s time to take your understanding of prompts even further and discover how to bridge the gap between your teaching know-how and AI tools’ vast capabilities. First, you’ll dissect an effective prompt, giving you the anatomy of a clear, concise, and impactful AI instruction. Then, you’ll perform a short activity to confirm your understanding.
There are five prompt-writing building blocks. Remember them by thinking of the “parts” of a prompt:
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Persona: Identify your role.
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Aim: State your objective.
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Recipients: Specify the audience.
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Theme: Describe the style, tone, and any related parameters.
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Structure: Note the desired format of the output.
Together, these building blocks help ensure AI outputs are accurate, relevant, and on-target for your needs. Here’s how:
First, identifying your persona enables you to set the context for your request. This input could be, “I am a Math Department Lead analyzing resource gaps.” Or you might explain, “I am a Spanish educator designing activities about cultural immersion.” Or perhaps, “I am a Tech Leader training educators on using digital tools.”
The second step is to state your aim, which provides direction for the AI tool and helps ensure the tool focuses on your desired outcome. For the Math Department Lead, the goal might be to draft a grant proposal to effectively advocate for more resources. The Spanish educator’s objective could be to update a lesson plan to further connect language with culture for greater understanding. And the Tech Leader could by trying to modify an activity with varying levels of scaffolding to promote personalized learning.
Next, your prompt should ensure impactful results by specifying the audience. This step gives AI the key information it needs to tailor language, tone, and content to resonate with recipients. The audience could be the school budget committee, sophomores with at least four years of Spanish, or 9th grade life skills educators.
Step four is describing the theme of your request, as AI tools are most effective when you offer clear boundaries. This can include inputs that ask the tool to use a formal voice, write no more than 50 words, include pop culture references, and be informative and enthusiastic.
The final building block is noting the structure. AI outputs can be formatted in bullet points, in code, even in emojis; you can ask for metaphors or analogies, sketches or graphs, quizzes or games — the possibilities are vast and adaptable to all sorts of contexts!
Download this PDF with the five prompt-writing building blocks as a resource for writing your own prompts.
Just click the link: How to write a prompt PDF.
Analyze AI prompt design
Now that you understand the key elements of an effective prompt, your next step is to review some examples. By deconstructing these prompts, you’ll gain the knowledge and familiarity with prompt structure so you can craft your own prompts for all kinds of purposes! As you evaluate each one, identify the five “parts” within the prompts:
Review the following example prompt and its output:
Prompt input:
Prompt:
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I am a 7th grade creative writing educator composing a class communication regarding expectations for students over the summer. The message should be about 75 words long and encourage students to establish a daily 30-minute writing schedule in preparation for next school year. Write it with a professional, yet friendly and inclusive, tone. The format is an email.
Prompt output:
Output:
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Subject: Get Your Creative Juices Flowing This Summer!
Hey there, writers!
Summer’s a blast, but don’t let your storytelling skills take a vacation! To keep those creative muscles strong, aim for 30 minutes of writing most days. It can be anything: journaling, poems, short stories, even scripts for your next epic movie idea!
Remember, reading is writing’s best friend, so grab a good book too. Happy exploring, and see you in the fall with amazing stories to share!
Warmly,
[Your Name]
Creative Writing Teacher
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Adapt the Output:
Lastly, check out this final example. Once again, note that the educator pastes into their prompt important details to help the AI perform effectively.
Prompt Input:
Prompt:
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I am a language arts educator. I want to improve our high school’s current mock interview activity for seniors who are planning to enter the workforce after graduation. Give me four creative ideas for making the activity more engaging and rewarding for the students. Present the ideas in bullet points. Here is an explanation of our current mock interviews:
Mock Interviews: Prepping Seniors for the Workforce
Prepare your students for the workforce with a mock interview! Divide them into interviewer-interviewee pairs, crafting scenarios tailored to their career interests. Let them shine, get feedback, and swap roles. Then, volunteer guest speakers from various fields will share their professional story and continue helping seniors practice their interviewing skills. This engaging exercise equips them with confidence for the exciting world of work!
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Prompt Output:
Output:
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4 Creative Ideas to Enhance Your Mock Interview Activity:
1. Theming and Gamification:
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Theme: Choose a specific industry or company type students are interested in. Dress according to the theme, prepare industry-specific questions, and have students research relevant information beforehand.
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Gamification: Award points for answering questions confidently, demonstrating strong body language, and showcasing relevant skills. Leaderboard challenges and prizes can further incentivize participation.
2. Interview Cafés:
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Set-up: Arrange tables and chairs like a cafe, with students acting as interviewees at designated “tables.” Interviewers can rotate, asking questions and providing feedback for each “customer” (interviewee).
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Variety: Include guest speakers, alumni, or even parents from diverse backgrounds as “cafe patrons” who pose different interview styles and questions.
3. Collaborative Mock Interviews:
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Group Interviews: Divide students into groups of 3-4 for a collaborative interview scenario. One student acts as the candidate, another as the main interviewer, and the rest as supporting interviewers, observing and providing feedback afterwards.
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Peer Feedback: Encourage the group to discuss the interview together, offering constructive criticism and highlighting strengths. This collaborative approach fosters teamwork and diverse perspectives.
4. Video Interviews and Self-reflection:
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Technology Integration: Record student mock interviews using phones or tablets. This allows students to watch their performance, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and self-reflect on improvement areas.
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Post-Interview Discussion: Facilitate discussions after students review their recordings, prompting them to identify areas for improvement and celebrate successes.
Bonus: Pair these ideas with additional resources like online interview preparation websites, mock interview apps, and career counseling sessions to equip students for success.
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Disclaimer: Results for illustrative purposes.
Adapt the output:
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