Plan like a pro with AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly become part of the education conversation, but for many teachers, using AI can feel like driving on an unfamiliar road with sharp turns and hidden dangers. AI can be a powerful support, not a replacement, for professional judgment. We can think of it like a high-performance car: the teacher is in the driver’s seat, deciding the route, the pace and the destination. With the right approach, AI can help you work more efficiently and with greater impact.

Navigating the road

When beginning with a new curriculum, subject or grade level, AI can help teachers quickly build background knowledge. It can clarify learning outcomes, highlight common misconceptions and suggest real-world connections across the curriculum. AI can also serve as a thinking partner, broadening perspectives by developing multiple viewpoints such as student, parent, academic or other important perspectives.

In everyday planning, AI can help with brainstorming, organizing and refining ideas, giving teachers back valuable time to focus on instruction and students—things that drive their joy in the profession.

Shifting gears

AI becomes most effective when it helps teachers move from generic lesson materials to intentional lesson design. By identifying proven teaching, engagement and assessment practices to be included in the lesson design, teachers can prompt AI to generate activities that build these strategies into lessons from the start.
This approach also applies to Alberta’s KUSP framework (knowledge, understanding, skills/procedures).

Teachers can ask AI to generate tasks that target specific key KUSP components. Rather than accepting a general lesson plan on a component, teachers can focus their prompting on what they know to be most important. AI can also support differentiation by suggesting tiered activities, scaffolds for English language learners, enrichment tasks and more.

Beyond text, AI tools can create images, slides or activity ideas that save preparation time and spark creativity. They can even draft formative assessment items, rubrics and feedback prompts, which lighten the workload while keeping the teacher in control. At its best, AI acts as a coplanner, helping teachers bring clarity and efficiency to their work.

Avoiding pitfalls

Teachers should be aware of potential risks. Protecting student privacy is essential. Identifiable student work, images or video should not be uploaded into AI tools without careful consideration of division policy and appropriate permissions. Accuracy and bias also matter. AI outputs must be reviewed and adapted to fit the right students in the right ways at the right times in our classrooms, and teachers are the best judges of that.

Open communication with administrators, colleagues, parents and students about how AI is being used helps build understanding and trust.

When used best, AI enhances professional expertise and never replaces it.

Looking ahead

By using AI wisely, teachers can save time for what matters most: building relationships, providing feedback and encouraging creativity in the classroom. Teachers are in the driver’s seat. AI is here to support the journey. 

Visit this website for information about scheduling a workshop: https://abteach.cc/PdAiWorkshops. 

Questions may be directed to pdworkshops@ata.ab.ca.