Teacher's Guides With AI
Offering AI-generated Lesson Plans for Your Book
Here’s a joke about my book, JEREMY THE ENGLISH GARDEN SNAIL.
Question: What did Jeremy say when he finally found a friend?
Answer: "Shell we be friends forever?"
I’m not falling over laughing, but it’s a decent joke. Right?
I didn’t create it. Instead, I used a Joke Creator tool on the MagicSchool.ai website. As the debates about AI rage, I realize that I can’t use AI to “write” my stories. But I don’t mind using AI to help teachers use my book in their classrooms.
Creating Lesson Plans with AI
Based on their books, authors often give away lesson plans or create lesson plans for sale on a site such as TeachersPayTeachers.com. For a while, I’ve been hearing that teachers often use AI to help create lesson plans.
Today, I decided to try it out. I have a low-resolution, small file size version of JEREMY, THE ENGLISH GARDEN SNAIL that I used to upload to various sites. This is the biggest difference between the author creating lesson plans and a teacher. YOU have access to a pdf of the book; teachers shouldn’t have the same access. YOU can upload your whole book to the AI to reference. It should be cumbersome for teachers to do the same things.
Using my low-res pdf, I asked the AIs to create lesson plans.
First, there are lots of these educator sites popping up, so I didn’t have time to try them all. I just tried Claude.ai, ChatGPT.ai, and MagicSchool.ai. I asked each one to create a lesson plan based on my book with reference to the NextGen Science Standards. Anticipating that I could upload reference material to the AI platforms, I downloaded the NextGen DCI Arrangements, and NextGenStandards by Topic. Each had its own strengths and weaknesses. Let’s look at these and then let me summarize a couple things.
Claude.ai Lesson Plans
I love Claude.ai projects, a folder where you can store documents to use in a prompt. I have a paid account while I’m testing various things on the platform. I uploaded the NextGenStandards by Topic, and my low-ref JERMY pdf. Those two docs used 83% of storage for the project folder, so I couldn’t add the NextGen DCI Arrangements. Here’s the prompt I used:
Today, I need lesson plans that teachers can immediately implement in a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade class after reading the book JeremyAnial-SM.pdf. The plan should include a reference to standards from the NextGen-AllTopic.pdf. Be creative in providing activities, questions, worksheets, puzzles and so on. The lesson plan should include about 15 minutes of instruction and questions, and then material for the students to work on by themselves. Give me a document that I can cut and paste into a Word document.
Download the Claude lesson plans for Jeremy, the English Garden Snail. The resulting plans were reasonable, with a reference to the standards, learning objectives, materials needed, lesson sequence, assessment, and extensions. It provided a basic worksheet. I asked for a crossword puzzle, but Claude doesn’t do graphics. It was adequate.
ChatGpt.ai Lesson Plans
Next, I tried ChatGPT.ai, where I have a free account. Download the ChatGPT lesson plans for Jeremy, the English Garden Snail.
There’s nothing special or much different from the Claude lessons. They are both competent. Interesting, after generating the lesson plan, ChatGPT asked if I would like to to generate images for the worksheet.
Yes! Free images, generated especially for the worksheets might be nice. However, the book is based on a snail with a left-coiled shell. Most snails have a right-coiled shell (think of a clockwise shell). ChatGPT could NOT draw a left-coiled snail. I told it that all the shells it drew were right-coiled; I told it that the shells were wrong and instead it should coil the shells in a counterclockwise direction. It could NOT correct this mistake. Not helpful.
MagicSchool.ai Lesson Plans
Finally, I signed up for MagicSchool.ai, one of the many AI programs popping up to help educators. I had to sign up and confirm from an email. Then, it set up a profile, which I answered as follows: Role: Teacher; Grade level: elementary K-3 AND elementary 4-6; and, Subject: Science/Stem.
This platform had many tools. First, I tried the Lesson Plan generator. Download the MagicSchool.ai Lesson Plans. Again, it was similar to the other AI programs—they all know the parts of a lesson plan to include from standards to assessment. But then, I looked at other tools.
Instead of a standard lesson plan, I could create a 5E Model Lesson plan which stands for Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. It’s a popular model with some educators. For this lesson plan, I had to specify second grade instead of second through fourth grade. My book because the Engage part of the lesson, and everything sent from there.
Another intriguing option was Text Dependent Questions. I uploaded the book’s pdf again. This time, I could specify questions based on Comprehension, Literary devices or other tasks that kids are asked to perform on texts. Of course, the AI knows that it’s audience wants both the questions and the answers. The questions were reasonable and directly addressed the topics of my books. For quick and easy, this is a good approach.
Then, there was fun! Teacher Jokes is a tool that creates jokes based on any text.
Why did Jeremy the snail bring a suitcase to the garden?
Because he wanted to carry his shell-fie stick!What did Jeremy say when he finally found a friend?
"Shell we be friends forever?"Why don’t snails ever get lost?
Because they always follow their shell-ebrations!
Joke #1 was especially interesting because the book discusses the use of social media as a tool for citizen science. So a selfie/shell-fie stick was a more subtle reference to the themes of the book.
Finally, I tried the Song Generator. Once again, I put in the book’s pdf, and asked it to generate a song in the style of Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” song.
Here’s the song it generated.
Snail Love (to the tune of “Shake It Off”
I stay up late, waiting for a mate
Coiled left, it's my unique trait
Scientists want to know my shell's design
#SnailLove campaign, feeling so fine'Cause Jeremy's gonna find, find, find another snail
Jeremy's gonna search, search, search across each trail
Baby, I'm just gonna slide, slide, slide with my shell
Citizen science gonna tell my taleLeft-coiled and rare, Angus wants to share
BBC Radio spread the word everywhere
Two months of searching, then Lefty appeared
Tomeu joined in, the research was cleared(Chorus)
Snail, snail, snail, slide it off
Snail, snail, snail, science talks
Snail, snail, snail, heredity walks
I'm gonna find my mate, gonna find my mateNo left-coiled babies, though we tried our best
Genetics showed something different from the rest
Hermaphrodite life, two years I'll roam
A garden snail story that became world-known(Repeat Chorus)
Break it down now! (#snaillove)
Slide, slide, glide
Science, science, science
Left-coiled pride!(Final Chorus)
Snail, snail, snail, slide it off
Snail, snail, snail, science talks
Snail, snail, snail, heredity walks
I'm gonna find my mate, gonna find my mate
I find this to be hilarious. Unusual. Interesting. I could see students using this to generate songs about their favorite books.
AI-Generated Lesson Plans for Your Books
General Success. AI programs understand lesson plans and can easily churn out a complete, appropriate lesson plan for your book. They can customize to certain grade levels and address certain standards.
Failure: Graphics. But they failed on creating interesting worksheets with graphics. I’m not an expert on prompting AI for image generation; if you are, then you may have better success.
Instead, I would try to use images from the book itself to enhance a worksheet.
Or, you could take the text of the worksheet to another program such as Canva.com or other graphics program.
Interesting and Fun. While I only tried one educator-focused AI platform, I’m sure there are many more with fun tools such as the Joke Creator and the Song Creator. Claude failed at crossword puzzles because the graphics were only ASCII text (just basic characters). But there are probably programs to create crossword puzzles and much more. This is where I’d spend more time using AI.
Overall: AI can save you time on writing a basic lesson plan. Interestingly, only YOU the author can create this type of lesson because you have access to the pdf while is needed as a reference. Try different platforms and consider combining the results into a lesson plan that highlights the book’s themes, topics, and elements that you think are important. But after the basics, you’ll need to spend time to create appropriate graphics to enhance the worksheets. Then, spend time looking for fun and interesting tools to riff off the book. Your book is unique in subject matter, themes, and language, so your results will very from mine. Still—tools abound! Test some AI educator tools to find your favorite.
What a great way to make AI work for you, Darcy.
That's such a good idea, I would never have thought to use AI to create a lesson plan. Where would you publish the finished teacher's guide? On your website or on other platforms? (I've wanted to make some for my books for years and never got around to it, so it's a new topic for me.)