🎓 Professional guide

AI for teachers

Planning lessons, grading with rigor, differentiating by level and getting your evenings back: how to use AI as a teaching assistant — and how to frame it with your students instead of playing cat and mouse.

Where it actually saves time

Unit and lesson planning. Turning a curriculum objective into a sequence of sessions with activities, materials and assessment is the task that eats the most evenings — and the one that delegates best. You supply your group's context; AI proposes the structure and you adjust it.

Differentiation by level. Generating three versions of the same activity (support, standard, extension) or adapting a text to different reading levels goes from impossible luxury to a minute of work.

Rubrics and feedback. Building clear criteria-based rubrics and writing personalized, constructive assessment comments — that tone that's hard to find on the 27th essay of the evening.

Family communication. Drafts of newsletters, term summaries or delicate emails, with the right balance between warm and professional.

// Prompts

Prompts ready for the classroom

Planning

Complete teaching unit

You're an experienced [SUBJECT] teacher for [GRADE/AGE]. Design a [N]-session unit on [TOPIC]: - Learning objective per session - Main activity (participatory) plus one alternative - Materials needed (cheap or free) - Assessment: how I'll know they got it My group: [SIZE, LEVEL, ANY PARTICULARS]. Table format, ready to paste into my planning doc.
Differentiation

Three levels of the same activity

Adapt this activity into three versions: 1) Support: more scaffolding, guided steps 2) Standard: as is, polished 3) Extension: more open-ended and challenging Same learning objective across all three. Note what changes and why, one line per version. [PASTE THE ACTIVITY]
Assessment

Criteria-based rubric

Create a rubric to assess [TASK/PROJECT] for [GRADE/AGE]: - 4 criteria max, in language students understand - 4 levels per criterion (insufficient → excellent) - Observable descriptors, no vagueness Add a 5-line "student version" summary I can hand out before the task begins.
Feedback

Tactful assessment comments

Write an assessment comment for [STUDENT X]: - What they did well: [STRENGTHS] - What needs work: [AREAS] - Context: [EFFORT, PROGRESS, SITUATION] Tone: constructive and specific, neither sugarcoated nor harsh. 3-4 sentences. End with one concrete next step the student can take this week.

AI and your students: from policing to conversation

Assume they're already using it. The useful question isn't "how do I detect AI?" (detectors fail in both directions), but "which assignments still make sense in a world with AI?". Tasks solved by pasting the prompt into a chat may not have been assessing much to begin with.

Redesign instead of banning. Oral defenses, in-class work, documented process ("show me your drafts and what you asked the AI") and assignments anchored in the local or personal hold up better — and tend to be better assignments.

Protect your students' data. Don't enter identifiable data about minors into consumer tools: use generic names ("student A") and check your school's policy before adopting any tool with the class.

// FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Isn't using AI to plan "cheating" as a teacher?
No more than using a textbook or another teacher's materials. The pedagogical judgment — what your group needs, which activity works with these particular students, when to adjust the pace — remains entirely yours. AI gives you back the time to exercise it.
Do AI detectors work for checking student work?
Unreliably: they produce false positives (accusing students who didn't use AI) and false negatives. It's sounder to assess the process — drafts, oral defense, in-class work — than to base decisions affecting a student on a detector score.
Where do I start this week?
Pick the task that stole the most time last month — probably planning or grading — and try one of this page's prompts on a real case. If AI is new to you, our Start Here path gets you going in an afternoon.

More resources: the prompt library, the time savings calculator and the rest of the profession guides. Anthropic also offers Claude for Teachers for educators.