40-minute hands-on workshop

AI in the Classroom

Practical Skills for the 21st-Century Teacher
Iyiola Akintaro · Generative AI Leader, Tutor & EdTech Coordinator

This is your page for the session. Every prompt here can be copied with one tap — you do not need to type any of them. Keep it open on your phone while we work.

One rule today: work on a lesson you are really teaching next week. Nothing hypothetical — practise on a made-up topic and you leave with nothing.
0:08

T.E.A.C.H.

Five things to tell it before you ask for anything. Miss one and you get a generic answer you have to rewrite anyway.

What most people type Write a lesson plan on photosynthesis.
T
Task
What exactly do you want made?
Draft a 40-minute lesson note on photosynthesis.
E
Exam & curriculum context
Which syllabus, class and term is this for?
Nigerian UBE Basic Science curriculum, JSS 2, First Term, Week 5.
A
Audience
Who are the pupils in front of you?
45 pupils, mixed ability, about eight read well below class level, none have used a microscope.
C
Constraints
What do you actually have?
No projector, no laboratory; materials must be buyable in Owerri market; one 40-minute period.
H
How it should look
What shape should the answer take?
Use my school's headings: Topic, Objectives, Previous Knowledge, Instructional Materials, Presentation (Steps 1–5), Evaluation, Assignment.
0:14

Activity 1 — bring your own lesson

Four minutes to fill the five boxes. Three minutes to copy it in and read what comes back. Work in threes: one types, one reads the prompt aloud, one is the critic.

Build your prompt

Type into the five boxes. Your prompt assembles below, ready to copy. It stays on this device, so you can come back to it.

Your prompt
Fill the boxes above and your prompt appears here.
Worked example — the one from the demo
You are helping a JSS 2 Basic Science teacher in Nigeria.

TASK: Draft a 40-minute lesson note on photosynthesis.
CURRICULUM: Nigerian UBE Basic Science, JSS 2, First Term.
AUDIENCE: 45 pupils, mixed ability; about eight read below class level; none have used a microscope.
CONSTRAINTS: No projector and no laboratory. Any material must be something I can buy in a local market. Include a 5-minute starter and a 5-minute plenary.
FORMAT: Use my school's headings — Topic, Objectives, Previous Knowledge, Instructional Materials, Presentation (Steps 1–5), Evaluation, Assignment.
When the answer comes back, do not start fixing it. Read it first, and ask one question: was that draft worth having? Then note the one thing it got most wrong — that is usually the box you left thin.
0:22

Activity 2 — three levels and a rubric

Stay in the same conversation. Do not start a new chat — it already knows your topic, your class and your constraints, and starting again means typing all of it twice.

Paste this first
Take the Evaluation questions from that lesson note and give me three versions of the same five questions:
(a) SUPPORT — simpler language, one step, no double negatives;
(b) CORE — as written;
(c) STRETCH — requires an explanation or an application to a new situation.
Keep the same underlying content in all three so I can mark the whole class together. Put them in a three-column table.
Then this
Write a 4-level marking rubric for the STRETCH questions. Use language simple enough that I can read it aloud to JSS 2 pupils. One sentence per level describing what good looks like. Add a total-marks column.
Is the support version genuinely simpler?Or has the learning been taken out of it entirely?
Is the stretch version actually harder?Or just longer — more words, same thinking?
Could you mark all three side by side?If not, ask it to fix that. It will.
0:30

The four red lines

These do not change when the tools change. Everything else on this page has a shelf life; this part does not.

1. No pupil data goes into a public AI tool.

No names, no marks, no home addresses, no family circumstances, no health or safeguarding information, no photographs. Anonymise before you paste: “Pupil A”, “Pupil B”. If you would not read it out in the staff room, it does not go into a chat box.

2. You verify. Every time.

Dates, formulas, historical facts, scripture references, local place names, exam-board terminology and answer keys are exactly where these tools invent things most confidently. A fluent wrong answer is still a wrong answer — and it is your name on the lesson note.

3. AI writes drafts. You are the teacher of record.

Nothing goes in front of pupils that you have not read end to end and changed at least a little. The professional judgement — is this right for my class, at this point in the term — is not delegable, and never will be.

4. Be open about it.

Tell your HOD. Tell your pupils when AI helped make a resource. A teacher who quietly uses AI while punishing pupils for the same thing has lost the argument before it starts.

Before any AI output reaches a pupil

  1. Is it true?Spot-check the facts, figures and references against your textbook or syllabus.
  2. Is it right for MY pupils?Reading level, class size, materials they actually have, examples they will recognise.
  3. Would I be comfortable if a parent saw how I made this?If the answer is no, the problem is not the tool. It is how it was used.
Practice: three things are wrong in this extract
Topic: The Water Cycle
Objective: By the end of the lesson, pupils will be able to define condensation, evaporation and precipitation.
Instructional Materials: A digital humidity sensor, an interactive whiteboard, and tablets for each pupil.
Presentation — Step 3: Explain that water boils at 100°C at all altitudes, so the temperature is always the same anywhere in the world.
Evaluation: Ask pupils to write a 500-word essay comparing the water cycle to the carbon cycle.
Wrong for the setting

Digital humidity sensors, an interactive whiteboard and a tablet each. Most classrooms do not have these — the C was never stated, so it assumed a well-funded classroom.

Factually wrong

Water does not boil at 100°C at all altitudes — boiling point falls as altitude rises. Fluent, confident, and wrong. This is why red line 2 exists.

Wrong level

A 500-word comparative essay, and the carbon cycle, are far beyond Primary 5 and do not match the stated objective. The A was missing.

Every one of those three errors is fixed by writing a better prompt — not by finding a better tool.

0:35

My one thing next week

One sentence. Not a plan. The teachers who actually change something are the ones who wrote down something small and specific.

Changes nothing“I will explore the tool.”
Changes Tuesday“I will write Tuesday's Basic Science note with T.E.A.C.H.”

Prompts to take home

Five more that work. Change the class, subject and school details to yours — that is the whole adaptation.

Feedback wording — no names
Here are three anonymous pupil answers — no names, no marks yet. For each, write two sentences of feedback: one specific thing done well, and one specific next step. Encouraging but not vague. Nigerian secondary school tone.

[paste the anonymised answers here]
Explain it three ways
Explain “fractions as parts of a whole” to a Primary 5 class in Owerri using three everyday examples a child here would recognise. Keep each example under 40 words. Then give me one question per example to check they understood.
Parent letter
Draft a short letter to parents of Primary 4 pupils about a science excursion on 24 September. Warm but formal, under 200 words. Must include: date, time, cost, what the child should bring, and a consent slip at the bottom for a parent to sign and return.
Scheme of work to weekly plan
Here is my term's scheme of work for SS 1 Economics [paste it]. Break Week 4 into a weekly plan of four 40-minute lessons. For each lesson give me the objective, one starter activity, the main teaching sequence, and one exit question. Nigerian curriculum. No resources beyond a chalkboard and the recommended textbook.
Turn my rough notes into a lesson note
I already know how I want to teach this. Here are my rough notes [paste]. Turn them into a full lesson note using my school's headings [paste headings]. Do not add new teaching content — only organise, expand and format what I have written. Flag anything that looks like a gap.

The full recording

The live session is deliberately narrow: one frame, two activities, four rules. The recording goes much deeper, a module at a time, in any order. Start with Module 2 if you only watch one.

0
Set up in ten minutesAccounts, free tiers, phone vs laptop
8 min
1
What is actually happeningHow it works — and why it invents things
10 min
2
T.E.A.C.H. in depthWorked prompts across every subject, primary and secondary
15 min
3
Planning end to endScheme of work to lesson note, in one conversation
12 min
4
Differentiation and inclusionThree levels, reading level, large mixed-ability classes
12 min
5
Assessment you can defendItems, rubrics, feedback — and the hard limits on marking
12 min
6
Pupils and AIRules, honesty, and tasks that are hard to outsource
10 min
7
Data, safeguarding and school policyWhat never goes in, and a one-page school policy
10 min
8
Your prompt library and a 6-week planBuilding something you will still use in November
8 min