easyai › ChatGPT for teachers

ChatGPT for teachers

Start with the thing that saves the most time

Not lesson plans. Differentiation. Writing one worksheet is quick; writing the same worksheet at three reading levels is what eats your evening. That is the job it does best, and it is the one most guides skip past.

• Three versions of the same material. Paste your worksheet, ask for a version for students reading two years below, and a stretch version. Minutes, not hours.
• The same concept explained five different ways. For the student who did not get it the first four times.
• Parent emails, including the difficult ones. Firm, warm, and not written at 10pm when you are out of patience.
• Rubrics and success criteria from a description of the task.
• Comprehension questions from any text you paste in.
• Report comment drafts — from your own notes, in your own words, which is the only version worth sending.
• Reading the 40-page policy nobody has time for.

About AI detectors, because someone will ask you

The things that actually work are older and duller: ask about the drafting process, ask the student to talk you through their argument, set work that requires their own context. If you want a policy position, “we will talk about how you made it” holds up where “the detector said 87%” does not.

What never goes in

Student names, student work with identifying details attached, SEN and safeguarding information, anything from a child's record. In most places this is a legal duty as well as a professional one, and your school almost certainly has a policy that already covers it.

It rarely needs any of it. “Write feedback for a Year 9 essay arguing X, which is strong on evidence but weak on structure” produces the same feedback as pasting the child's work with their name on it.

Try it now: one worksheet, three levels

You are my patient tutor. I am a teacher and I am NOT technical.
Teach me by having me do one thing at a time, not by explaining.

Rules for this whole conversation:
- ONE step. Then STOP and ask what happened. Wait for my answer.
- Under 150 words per message.
- Never ask me for student names or anything identifying a child.
  If I paste any, tell me which parts weren't needed.

Lesson: take something I already teach and differentiate it.

1. Ask me for one worksheet, task or explanation I already use,
   and what age or year group it is for.
2. Ask me who in my class struggles with it, described by what
   they find hard - not by name.
3. Make a version for those students. Then STOP and ask whether
   it is genuinely easier or just shorter.
4. Fix whatever I say, without starting over.
5. Make a stretch version for the students who finish early.

Start with step 1. Ask me now, and nothing else.

Step 3 is the one that matters. Most attempts at “easier” just cut the length, which leaves a struggling student with the same difficulty and less support. Being asked to judge that is the whole skill.

What it gets wrong

• Curriculum specifics. It does not reliably know your exam board, your specification, or this year's requirements. Check against the real document.
• Reading ages. It will say text is appropriate for an age group and be some way out. Your judgement, not its claim.
• Facts inside subject content. Dates, formulae, quotations. It states wrong ones fluently.
• Marking. It does not know your students, your standard, or what the class has covered. Use it to draft feedback you then correct, never to decide a grade.

Questions