11 AI Prompts Every Teacher Should Know
The average K-12 teacher works 49 hours a week. About a quarter of that time is uncompensated. Most teachers I know didnât choose this field to spend evenings generating quiz questions, rewriting instructions or creating elaborate rubric spreadsheets to fit a state-mandated standard. AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini wonât change these realities. But when youâre overwhelmed, they can help you streamline some of the most tedious aspects of your work. They can free up your energy for what only a human teacher can do. And AI assistants can actually push us to be more creative. They can help us overcome teaching ruts, nudging us to revitalize aspects of our teaching that are growing stale. AI assistants have arrived at a time when teachers need support to do their best work. In a national survey by the RAND Corporation, just 24% of teachers reported being satisfied with their total weekly hours worked, and 66% said their base salary was inadequate. AI tools wonât make up for unfair compensation. But they can help us save time and create a better work/life balance. They can also help us do better work. The first step to making the most of AI is understanding how to use prompts. A prompt is a natural language instruction to an AI assistant. It doesnât have to include technical or formal language. You donât even have to use full sentences. Prompts are tool agnostic, so you can use them with whichever AI assistant you have access to. I recommend the free or paid versions of Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT, but you can also use free AI tools that run privately on your own laptop, like Jan.ai or Msty.ai. As the teacher, you guide an AI assistant like Claude or Gemini with relevant context. For prompts to work well they have to be detailed, including specifics and context. Generic prompts yield generic responses. It helps to iterate on AI output with follow-up prompts. Ask for more specificity or detail. Adapt the response for your students, donât use it as is. Part of retaining your agency in the process is making sure you build on whatever outputs an assistant generates. Youâre the director. Itâs much like you were adopting an open-educational resource. The advantage, though, is that this material will be more tailored to your students and teaching approach. Knowing how to use prompts effectively can mean the difference between AI thatâs actually helpful and AI thatâs gimmicky. The prompts below are designed to provide you with a creative boost. They each illustrate a practical way to use AI in support of thoughtful, pedagogically-sound teaching. You donât need any special technical skills or subscriptions. You can copy, paste, and customize them to suit your subject matter. If you want to use prompts more efficiently, create a Claude or ChatGPT Project, or a Gemini Notebook. Thatâs a folder where you provide a summary of context about your students that the AI assistant can reference whenever you ask for support. You can also upload past materials, syllabi, lesson plans, curriculum guidelines, Common Core State Standards, or whatever else would be helpful context for the AI assistant. You can also provide detailed instructions in the project for how youâd like the AI to assist you. Youâre training the AI assistant and teaching it your preferences. Once you set up a project, you wonât have to repeatedly type in the same context. I set up projects for each of the classes and workshops I teach. The first five minutes of class set the tone for everything that follows. A short, well-designed opening activity can draw students in. Engaging openers are especially valuable on Mondays, after vacations or when youâre pivoting to a new topic. The challenge is coming up with fresh ones regularly. Goal: Generate a bunch of quick activities you can use at the start of a class session, adapted for your subject and your students. Prompts: âI teach [subject x] to students in [grade level x]. Weâre studying [specific topic xyz. Be as detailed as possible about your subject and context. Include a sentence or series of phrases of context about your particular class and teaching style, or any special needs or context for your students. No need to make it formal].â âGenerate five bell-ringer activities I can adapt to open a [xx] minute class. Each should take no more than [x] minutes, require no materials, and either activate prior knowledge or help students reflect on what theyâve just learned. Include one thatâs discussion-based, one thatâs written and one thatâs a game or visual/creative task. [Or adapt these examples to reflect your subject matter. For example, one of the options could be a logic puzzle or an artistic challenge].â I teach U.S. History to 10th graders at a public school in San Diego. Weâre starting a unit on the civil rights movement. Weâre focusing on the tactics used in nonviolent protest: sit-ins, freedom rides, and marches. My students respond well to visuals and storytelling, but some of them are slow to settle into our morning class sessions. Generate five bell-ringer activities I can adapt to start class in an engaging way. Each should take no more than five minutes, require no handouts, and either activate prior knowledge or get students thinking about why ordinary people take extraordinary risks. Include one thatâs discussion-based, one thatâs written, and one that involves an image or short video clip I can pull up on the projector. When youâre juggling administrative meetings, multiple preps and paperwork, it can be hard to give extra attention to helping students relate to a given learning unit. This prompt helps you brainstorm connections to contemporary music, art, film, TV, cultural trends or other subjects of interest to students. Goal: To generate five ways to show your students how the topic youâre teaching is relevant to their lives, each with a two-sentence hook you can use to open discussion. Prompt: âIâm about to begin a unit on [x topic] with [x grade level] students. [Provide a sentence of additional context and a few additional details about your studentsâ interests]. Generate five ways to connect this material to something students at [x] grade level may likely be able to relate to. This can include sports, the arts, social media trends, pop culture, music or other contemporary issues. For each connection, suggest a two-sentence hook I can adapt to help jumpstart a class discussion.â Iâm about to start a unit on percentages and ratios with 7th graders. I teach in a suburban middle school in Ohio. Many of my students follow football and basketball. Many also spend a lot of time on social media. A few are really into cooking and video games. Generate five ways to connect percentages and ratios to things 7th graders actually care about. This can include sports stats, social media follower counts, video game scoring, food recipes, or other relatable subjects. For each connection, suggest a one-sentence hook I could use to kick off a class discussion. Showing students examples of common mistakes can help them avoid those pitfalls. But we canât embarrass students by showing examples of their weakest work. Fortunately, AI assistants are excellent example generators. They can come up with nearly any kind of error you specify, saving you hours you might otherwise have spent creating intentionally bad work. You can adapt this prompt to include any kind of error you want your students to avoid. These can include experimental design mishaps in science or mangled math formulas. If youâre teaching essay writing, showcase logical fallacies or ad hominem arguments. Hereâs an example of a table of common writing traps I generated with the help of an AI assistant. Goal: Produce five realistic examples of a specific error type, unlabeled, so students can identify, discuss and learn from the flaws. Prompt: âIâm teaching [x subject/topic] to [grade level x] students. [Provide an additional sentence of specific context about your class, the learniâŠ
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