THE PREP PERIOD

Quick tips, tools & tricks you can take to the classroom on Monday

5-Week Series on Prompting | This week's tip comes from Aldeya​

Week 1: Prompt Writing Peer Review

Welcome to our 5-week series on prompting for students! At the end of the 5 weeks you'll have a solid guide for prompting and some handy starter prompts to try in class.

We're kicking it off this week with a resource from the ​Aldeya Resource​ library - The Prompt Peer Review Rubric.

This guide builds off of last week's resource ​Anatomy of a Strong Prompt​ where we discussed applying the Bloom's Taxonomy Apply step in the context of strong prompt writing. The rubric breaks down Anatomy of a Strong Prompt into digestible components that students can apply to their actual prompts. It’s designed for peer review, encouraging human conversation around AI inputs.

Going into these next 5 weeks, I’ll be sharing prompt ideas that students can try in the classroom. This rubric serves as a tool for students to practice with as they incorporate prompt writing into their learning. I’ll be dropping some strong prompt ideas, but it’s always worth having students evaluate their efficacy for themselves! They should examine, judge, and iterate until they have a solid prompt to aid them in their learning - and this rubric gives them a concrete model, clear language, and method for strong feedback.

The full guide and rubric PDF can be downloaded for free here: ​aldeya.ai​.

LOUNGE READS

The AI headlines that matter for your classroom

AI use in schools is becoming more practical and more routine. Teachers are receiving more training, using AI to reduce administrative workload, and exploring tools that may help students practice skills in lower-stakes ways. At the same time, the examples point to a need for training that is more classroom-relevant and for clearer transparency around AI-related tools and claims.

Education Week

​More Schools Are Providing AI Training for Teachers. Is It Any Good?​

Educator AI training is happening, but teachers say it often misses what they actually need in class.

"By the fall of 2025, the percentage of K-12 teachers who reported receiving no training on AI dropped to 50%, while 14% said they’d had multiple sessions and 5% reported receiving ongoing training."

NPR

​Overworked and understaffed: Special ed teachers turn to AI for help​

Special education teachers are using AI to draft IEP language.

"I have time to talk to the kiddos and really build those relationships... instead of sitting here in front of my computer."

District Administration

​How a Small Robot Helped ELL Students Speak​

A low-tech-looking robot gave English learners a lower-stakes way to practice speaking out loud.

Disclaimer: while I find the content of this article interesting, after a sinking suspicion that it was written by an AI, I noticed the article's author listed as "Telo AI" - the AI company behind the robot. Infer from that what you will.

SARAH'S PICK

The Harvard Gazette

​Want to avoid being replaced by AI? Think fresh verbs.​

Preserving the Very Human Act of Writing

This article stood out to me not because the title teased a way to avoid obsolescence but because it made me ask myself, what does writing mean to us as human beings that we feel the need to defend our dominion over it?

The article’s author, Sarah L. Kaufman, advises us to defend ourselves by writing, “with truthfulness and humanity”.

But why do we write in the first place? Why do we attempt the difficult task of teaching the art of writing to our children?

I’d offer that we write because we want to be understood and to understand one another. We are compelled to pass this skill to our children because we know instinctively that this is their inheritance as human beings: a powerful instrument for knowing the self and the other.

In college, my freshman Fundamentals of Human Communication professor said something that stuck with me for the last several years:

Writing is a form of communication that spans generations, cultures, and realities.

Kaufman mentions the distressing prevalence of AI slop and gives examples of her own attempts to prompt ChatGPT into writing something less numbingly obvious, clichéd, and lifeless than its typical slop. She was not successful.

Unfortunately, the ubiquity of AI chatbots, their easy access, and their promise of temptingly swift results has drawn even those who write professionally toward their use - with sometimes lackluster and even embarrassing results. (Try searching “Certainly, here is…” or “As an AI language model…” and you’ll find an upsetting number of research articles that include these unfortunate AI whistleblowers.)

AI can undoubtedly be a useful tool. It can run grammar checks, serve as a sounding board, and produce tools for us. But as Kaufman says,

Fostering a love of writing may be a slightly tougher battle these days but it isn't impossible. Engaging with and dissecting rich texts that open new worlds, offering free-writing time like low-stakes journaling, and heart mapping are still strategies students respond to because they encourage them to wade into the waters of another's reality and to open up their reality to others and to themselves.

While we certainly want to equip students for a world where AI is a ubiquitous tool, we should not abandon our responsibility in passing down to them our shared inheritance. Writing can open us to new worlds, new possibilities, new skills, and previously unreachable opportunities to be understood and to understand one another.

A NOTE BEFORE YOU GO...

I'm glad you're here! If something resonated this week, hit reply and tell me. If you know a fellow educator who would find this useful, forward it their way. The village grows when educators share with other educators.

Never hesitate to send me an email if you're looking for some human-forward thought partnership.