01Keep student information out of the chat.
Names, grades, IEP details and behavior notes don’t belong in a chatbot.
Most AI chat tools send what you type to a company’s servers, and some use conversations to improve their models unless you change a setting. Treat every prompt as if it could be read by someone outside your school.
Describe needs instead of people: “three students who need the passage read aloud” works just as well as their names. Never paste IEPs, 504 plans, grades, health information or anything that identifies a child.
If your district provides an approved AI tool, use that one for school work — and follow its rules.
Start with your learning objective.
Tell the tool what students should be able to do, not just the topic.
“Make a worksheet about fractions” gets you something generic. “Students will use a visual model to explain why 1/2 and 2/4 are equivalent” gets you something you can teach.
Put the objective first in your prompt and ask the tool to keep every activity tied to it. Then check that it did.
Give it the context a substitute would need.
Grade, time, what students already know, and what they find hard.
AI can’t see your classroom. The more it knows about the situation, the less generic the draft. Useful details: grade, subject, lesson length, the materials you have, what came before this lesson, and the misconceptions you expect.
A good test: if a thoughtful substitute could teach from your description, the AI has enough to draft from too.
Ask for a draft. You are the editor.
Treat output as a first pass to cut, rewrite and reorder.
The fastest workflow is usually: get a draft, then edit hard. Ask for a short version you can expand rather than a long one you have to trim.
Keep what fits your students, cut what doesn’t, and rewrite anything that doesn’t sound like you. Your judgment is what makes it a good lesson.
Check every fact and every answer key.
AI can be confidently wrong — especially with math and citations.
Language models can produce answers that look right and aren’t: an arithmetic slip in a key, a made-up quotation, a book that doesn’t exist, a date that’s off by a decade.
Work every math problem yourself. Verify facts against a source you trust. Never pass along a citation, statistic or quote you haven’t confirmed.
Ask for options, not one answer.
Three hooks, three exit tickets, three ways to phrase the question.
Asking for several versions turns the tool into a brainstorming partner. You pick the strongest, combine the best parts, or realize none of them fit — which is useful too.
Try: “Give me three different openings for this lesson: one with a question, one with an object, one with a short story.”
Make it show what it changed.
When adapting, ask for a short list of every change.
When you ask AI to simplify a passage or adapt an activity, ask it to list what it changed and why. That makes it much faster to review — and easier to spot when meaning was lost along the way.
This is how the Teacher Tools lesson studio works: every packet includes a “What changed” section.
Read it with your students in mind.
Check reading level, cultural assumptions and who shows up in examples.
AI output can drift above grade level, lean on assumptions that don’t match your students’ lives, or default to the same kinds of names and examples.
Read the draft as your students would. Swap examples for ones that connect with your class, and simplify sentences where needed.
Know your school’s policy — and be open about it.
Your district may already have rules for which tools are allowed.
Many schools and districts now have AI guidance covering which tools are approved, what data can be used, and how to talk about AI with students and families. Find yours before you start.
Being open about how you use AI to plan models the honest use you probably want from your students, too.
Save the prompts that work.
A good prompt is a reusable planning template.
When a prompt gets you a great result, save it with the blanks marked — like the ones in the prompt library below. Next time you change the details instead of starting over.
The Teacher Tools prompt builder does this for you: fill in the form and it writes a structured prompt you can copy into any AI tool.