A Curriculum Supervisor’s Guide to AI-Assisted Lesson Planning

Eleven years ago, there I was. Every Sunday. A first-year teacher struggling for hours on end to design, draft, and submit a halfway-decent lesson plan for the impending week. With practice, lesson design would become far less frustrating and often even exciting for me. Even so, the plans still required a considerable portion of my time as a teacher.

Fast forward to now—the age of artificial intelligence. Today, the kind of planning and preparation that used to take hours can be done in minutes. Regardless of your position on tools like ChatGPT, teachers are using AI.

In my current role as an ELA and social studies curriculum supervisor, I check other teachers’ lesson plans on a weekly basis. More of my teachers have begun to lean on AI for lesson design. Rather than discouraging that, I started working with them to use AI more effectively. Here’s how.

4 Steps to Generating Effective Lesson Plans with AI

Step 1. Reflect on the purpose of your plan. Mitigating teacher workload is one of my core values as an instructional leader. However, lightening the load should never come at the cost of instructional quality, and lesson plans aren‘t just a tool of compliance. Regardless of the template you are required to use, planning and preparation are central to excellent instruction. Before you use AI, make sure you are invested in designing engaging, challenging, effective lessons to meet the academic needs of your kids. AI can make it tempting just to accept the first prompt response and be done—and that doesn’t serve you, or the kids in the class.

Step 2. Start with the standards and use AI to unpack them. Creating an effective lesson plan, with or without AI, should always begin with the standards. Standards dictate grade-level proficiency, identifying the mark our children must meet—thus driving a baseline of challenge for the class.

Accordingly, identify an upcoming standard within your unit—I use an ELA standard in this article, but this works with social studies as well. Task AI with siphoning all necessary goals from the standard. Throughout this process, I will be using variations of the ACDQ prompt method. In this method, you instruct AI what to “act” as, provide the “context” for the query, ask it to consider the problem in some “depth,” and then instruct the bot to ask you “questions.”

My prompt: “You are a tenth grade English Language Arts teacher planning a lesson within a unit about argument, argumentative texts, and argumentative writing. Analyze the following New Jersey Student Learning Standard for English Language Arts and identify every necessary goal students will need to meet in order to become fully proficient in this standard. NJ ELA Standard: Introduce precise claims, distinguish the claims from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that establishes clear relationships among claims, counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.”

Things to note: I am using Gemini, Google’s AI engine; this prompt would work in ChatGPT as well. Gemini broke the standard into three learning objectives for me: crafting precise claims, distinguishing claims, and organizing academic writing. I want to focus on the third.

Gemini’s response:

Students need to be able to structure their arguments logically, demonstrating clear relationships between:

Claims and Counterclaims: Students must demonstrate an understanding of how claims and counterclaims interact. Can they effectively address opposing viewpoints? Do they understand strategies for refuting, conceding, or integrating counterclaims?

Claims and Reasons: Students must demonstrate how reasons support the main claim. Are the reasons relevant, logical, and persuasive? Is the connection between the claim and the reasons clear?

Reasons and Evidence: Students must demonstrate how evidence supports the reasons. Is the evidence credible, sufficient, and relevant? Is the connection between the reasons and the evidence clear? Do they understand how to properly cite evidence?

Step 3: Choose the necessary goal. Now that my articulate virtual assistant has aided me in unpacking the standard, I can identify the goals I need to cover. At the middle and high school level, we are often building on a set of prerequisite skills. This means that covering the entirety of every standard is not always necessary depending on the makeup of your class. Perhaps my students have already demonstrated a strong understanding of crafting precise claims but struggle to objectively identify opposing perspectives. I want to concentrate on that specific goal—in this case, claims and counterclaims.

My prompt: “Revise these learning goals to ensure higher order thinking based on Bloom's Taxonomy and measurability of knowledge, concept, and skill. Ask me any relevant questions.”

Things to note: I use this prompt to ensure rigor and measurability of goals, and to make sure that the plans will be suitable for assessment. Although Gemini offered a range of measurable goals based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, from analysis to creation, I am basing my lesson plan on the first one: Analyzing Claims and Counterclaims.

Gemini’s response:

Okay, let’s revise those learning goals to incorporate higher-order thinking skills based on Bloom’s Taxonomy and ensure measurability. We want to move beyond simple recall and comprehension and push students toward analysis, evaluation, and creation.

Analyzing Claims and Counterclaims: Students will be able to deconstruct complex arguments, identifying and evaluating the effectiveness of claims, counterclaims, and their relationships within the text. (Measurable: Students can provide a written analysis of an argumentative text, identifying the main claim, counterclaims, and explaining how the author addresses or fails to address them, justifying their evaluation with specific examples from the text.)

Using the prompt above, I now have a well-defined, measurable goal: Students will be able to deconstruct complex arguments, identifying and evaluating the effectiveness of claims, counterclaims, and their relationships within the text. Now I can move my lesson design forward, ensuring that the objective, assessment, and instruction are aligned.

Step 4: Use AI to provide you with options for assessment. At this point, by virtue of having a clear objective, you may have an idea for assessment. However, if you do not, task your virtual assistant with providing you with aligned assessment options to choose from.

My prompt: “For each goal, think deeply and create a choice of three assessments per goal. Ask me any relevant questions including but not limited to my class, student demographics, reading proficiency levels, student disabilities, and languages spoken by students.

Gemini’s response:

Okay, let's craft three assessment options for each of the revised learning goals, keeping in mind the need for higher-order thinking and measurability. I’ll also include clarifying questions to ensure the assessments are appropriate for your class.

Learning Goal 1: Analyzing Claims and Counterclaims (Deconstructing complex arguments)

Assessment 1: Textual Analysis Essay: Students analyze a provided argumentative text, identifying the main claim, counterclaims, and explaining how the author addresses (or fails to address) them. They justify their evaluation with specific examples from the text.

Assessment 2: Debate Analysis: Students observe a formal debate and write an analysis of the arguments presented, focusing on the effectiveness of the claims, counterclaims, and rebuttals. They should evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each side‘s arguments.

Assessment 3: Comparative Claim Analysis: Students are given two articles on the same topic presenting different viewpoints. They analyze and compare the claims and counterclaims presented in each, evaluating which argument is more logically sound and persuasive, justifying their analysis.

Then, because I prompted the AI engine to ask me any relevant questions, my virtual assistant asked me for clarification and a better understanding of my classroom culture. It wrote:

Now, my questions for you:

Student Choice: How important is it to you to offer student choice in assessment formats? Would you be open to allowing students to choose from the options provided, or do you prefer to assign specific assessments?

Technology Access: Do all students have consistent access to technology for creating multimodal projects and presentations? If not, what are the limitations, and how can we address them?

Collaboration: Are group projects and collaborative assessments appropriate for this class? If so, what are your guidelines for group work, and how do you ensure individual accountability?

Grading Rubrics: Are you comfortable using rubrics to assess these assignments? Would you like to collaborate on developing rubrics that align with these learning goals and assessments?

Assessment Timeline: How much time do you typically allocate for major writing assignments and projects? This will help determine the scope and complexity of the assessments.

Specific Examples: Do you have any specific examples of topics or issues that you think would be particularly engaging for this group of students, and that would lend themselves well to these types of assessments? This would be very helpful in making the assessments relevant and meaningful.

My response: “Student choice is a core value in my classroom. I am always open to giving students both choice and voice. All students have laptops. Group projects are a critical component of instruction in my class. Group work is normed by assigning roles and responsibilities. I am open to using rubrics. This assessment should require no more than 5 to 10 minutes of reading and 10 to 15 minutes of writing. My student interests include social media (specifically tiktok), anime and manga, and pop music.”

Gemini’s revised suggestions:

Excellent! Student choice, readily available technology, collaborative work, and a clear timeframe are all helpful parameters. Knowing student interests in social media (TikTok), sports, and pop music is also key for relevant assessments.

Given these parameters, let's refine the assessment options, focusing on brevity for reading and writing, and incorporating student choice. Learning Goal 1: Analyzing Claims and Counterclaims (Deconstructing complex arguments)

Assessment 1: TikTok Trend Analysis (Written): Students choose a current TikTok trend (related to one of their interests if possible). They analyze a video related to the trend, identifying the implicit or explicit claim being made, any counterclaims presented in the comments or other related videos, and how the original video creator addresses (or ignores) those counterclaims. (Focus: Short, focused analysis, potentially using a template.)

Assessment 2: Sports Debate Snippet Analysis (Written): Students choose a short clip from a sports debate show or podcast. They analyze the arguments presented by each participant, identifying the key claims and counterclaims, and evaluating the effectiveness of each side’s argument. (Focus: Concise analysis of a short, readily available clip.)

Assessment 3: Pop Music Review Analysis (Written): Students choose a review of a current pop song or album. They analyze the reviewer’s argument, identifying the main claim (e.g., “This album is a masterpiece,” or “This song falls flat”), any counterclaims the reviewer anticipates or addresses, and how the review is structured to persuade the reader. (Focus: Analysis of a short, focused piece of writing.)

Now that you have a great objective and aligned assessment, you can use AI to further assist in planning your instruction or do that on your own. Rather than simply prompting the program to create the rest of the plan, think about each part of the lesson and tap your assistant when needed.