Turning Lesson Ideas Into Usable Resources With AI

Great ideas for education practices pop up all the time: on my social feeds, in newsletters, and as part of professional development. I love when I can implement these ideas in my classroom the very next day. But sometimes I need a bridge between the idea and the implementation. For me, I now often use AI to build that bridge.

After I encounter a great idea, I turn to AI as a thought partner, using the idea as input and carefully directing AI to create the materials I need to put it into practice. Here is how I do it.

Create Context

To do this effectively, it’s critical to create context with your tool so it works as an effective thought partner. First, choose your tool. After having tested many, I use a subscription version of Claude, primarily for work and personal research. Providing your tool with your résumé, sample lesson plans, and some of your social media posts can help create context that reflects your interests, values, and professional experience.

I started with this prompt: “How would you describe me and what I care about?” Its response revealed a solid understanding based on the materials I had input.

While it might seem easy to create a foundation for prompting the creation of classroom materials, it was more complex than I thought it would be. Some of my initial efforts to create lesson plans required developing very specific prompts to create the products I wanted to use. Saying “Create a second-grade lesson plan on using an apostrophe” evolved into “Create a four-day lesson slide deck with engaging whiteboard activities and a low-stakes quiz on the last day for second graders to learn how to use an apostrophe to make possessive nouns and contractions. Each day’s lesson should be 15–20 minutes long.”

My final prompt came after numerous attempts but is now one I use often, interchanging the topic as needed. Although context-building takes time and requires deep thought and patience, the payoff is that future products will evolve more quickly and be finished sooner. The time and effort to do this well are worth it.

As you create context with your AI tool, it’s important to use AI responsibly. This means thinking deeply about what you can upload and use for context. Never put in sensitive private data or financial information. Crucially, all output needs to be reviewed with a fine-toothed comb for accuracy and with respect to bias to make sure that final products are ethical, safe, and transparent. Making this part of our practice and context is critical.

Building the Bridge

To test my new skills, I focused on building math fluency materials based on an article I wrote for Edutopia: “Routines That Support Math Fact Fluency.” An education leader who had seen it on LinkedIn wrote a post and posed some insightful questions about it:

• How does this actually become systemwide practice, not just an isolated classroom win?
• What does this look like in every classroom? What are the nonnegotiables versus flex points?
• Where can AI help (if used intentionally)?
• Do we have a system that can reliably turn good ideas into consistent practice across classrooms?

These questions stopped me cold in my tracks. Moments like this change me. I reflected and planned. Turning to Claude, I provided context, my goals, my article, and the questions, and wrote a prompt to create resources and ideas for tools.

After I provided Claude with clarification about tools mentioned in the post, it then created those tools, including a math fact fluency leadership tool kit with a professional learning community discussion protocol, classroom walk-through look-fors, instructional coaching questions, and teacher entry points. I was extremely pleased with the quality of the output, so I then asked it to create a one-page PDF implementation guide to summarize the original output document.

I reviewed both documents very closely, then began an iterative feedback and change process as I envisioned the final documents. Several requests later, I had my final products. My prompts included requests to add links, revert to previous versions when changes didn’t work, and adjust spacing, font size, margins, and other formatting for printing. It is necessary to be specific and very patient while working through formatting changes.

As you can tell, quality control and final revisions are real work that takes time, finesse, and patience. After all the prompts above, everything finally had the look, feel, and content I needed.

Continue Practicing Your Skills

Another Edutopia article I wrote—“Low-Lift Elementary Classroom Routines That Get Students Ready to Learn”—was about simple, repeatable routines in elementary classrooms. A colleague who had read it stopped by and asked to watch the routines in action. To prepare, that night I went home and reflected about how to help teachers start, and successfully implement, new routines. I went back to Claude and loaded in the article and a prompt saying I wanted to create an implementation guide for educators. Several iterations later, I had a document outlining the principles in the article, the protocols, and guidance on building a practice. The document was in my preferred color scheme and was ready to use. Once it was done, I asked Claude to store design guidelines for future implementation guides.

In another example, I used AI to adapt content for my students based on another article that I loved, but that was geared for older students. I used Claude to help me design an implementation guide for second graders. Again, because my context with my tool is well-established, a great product was quickly generated, requiring fewer revision prompts. I now have a ready-to-use, one-page implementation guide for younger students based on the original article.

Next Steps

Find an idea you love. Think about what you need to bring it to life, and then start working with AI as a thought partner to create what you need. It could be an implementation guide, an adapted version of the idea, a step-by-step manual, or a leadership tool kit. Then dive into it and enjoy immersing yourself in that great idea and your work to make it happen.