How Teachers Can Use SchoolAI Spaces to Design Dynamic, Student-led Learning

Guest Blog by Jeff Hennigar

The evolving needs of our students demand innovative solutions. With Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as our goal, we can create inclusive learning environments to help all students be successful in school. While powerful AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT can enhance teaching practices, they often lack the structure and guidance necessary for safe and effective student use in school.

SchoolAI Spaces provides a solution. It offers a secure platform where students can interact with AI with the guardrails needed in the classroom setting. A Space is a customized chatbot that is prompted by a teacher to have a very specific job. This means students can’t use it to get AI to write for them, to give them all the answers, or to go down a rabbit hole of off-task conversations with the chatbot. 

As the teacher, you can create activities to meet the specific needs of your students. My best SchoolAI Spaces have prompts that read like detailed substitute teacher plans; they are sequential steps for how the AI should lead the students through the lesson. I want to share some of my favorite ways to use SchoolAI Spaces with my grade five students. 

For each example below, I’ve linked to the SchoolAI activity in the heading. You can preview the activity on that page or “remix” it to customize it for your students and curriculum topics before launching it for your class. Let’s explore ways you can use SchoolAI Spaces to create student-led learning experiences in your classroom!

Instant Feedback

Consider using Spaces to provide students immediate and specific feedback on their work. For example, in this paragraph writing feedback Space, students are asked to share their writing. The chatbot is prompted to give the students two stars and a wish and then asks them to revise their writing before sharing it again. 

The benefits of this approach are multifaceted. Students receive immediate feedback, which keeps them engaged and motivated to make progress in real time. Instead of hitting a bump or feeling lost, they have individualized support. The AI feedback is specific and customizable, allowing teachers to tailor it to particular focus areas, such as grammar, punctuation, word choice, or structure. This adaptability ensures that feedback aligns with individual needs. Interacting with AI can also help students become more independent learners. By receiving objective, non-judgmental feedback, students may feel more comfortable taking risks in their writing.

For more on effective feedback, check out Catlin’s blog titled “How and When to Give Feedback.”

Personalized Reading Passages

In a more traditional reading lesson, I would have most students reading the same text example. By shifting the activity to a SchoolAI Space, students are first prompted to share what they would like to read about. Depending on the goal of the lesson, they can have free choice or be offered a narrow selection of options. SchoolAI generates customized reading passages with that information, like this activity focusing on descriptive language. You could even prompt it to ask students to choose a complexity level for the text so they get an even more catered passage to read.

Consider integrating your customized reading assignments into a choose your reading path adventure choice board. 

Support for Math Problems

Sometimes, my students practice skills learned in math class on paper. By sharing images or PDFs of the practice pages with the chatbot, SchoolAI knows the questions and can be prompted to act as a virtual guide on the side while students work on paper. SchoolAI can explain concepts in multiple ways, catering to diverse learning preferences and making challenging material more accessible.

For multilingual learners, it can provide explanations in their first language, bridging gaps in comprehension and helping them build skills in both math and language. Integrating text-to-speech and voice-to-text features further enhances accessibility, ensuring students with varying needs can engage seamlessly with the platform.

This approach empowers students to take charge of their learning and encourages deeper understanding as they actively engage in problem-solving rather than passively waiting for help. The virtual tutor’s ability to adapt explanations and respond to individual queries makes math practice more personalized and meaningful, supporting a wide range of learners in achieving success. By leveraging AI in this way, teachers can create a more inclusive, equitable, and effective learning environment that meets students where they are and helps them move forward confidently.

Math teachers looking for additional strategies to get students thinking about mathematical concepts can check out Catlin’s Math Journal User Guide.

Book Club Moderator

I’m excited to try this with my class soon! I created a space programmed to act as a moderator in a book club. I think this will be especially helpful when students are first getting used to this new learning framework. 

The prompt asks students to answer the following questions: Who is participating in the meeting? Which book are they reading? What chapter are they on? With this information, specific students can be asked to lead parts of the conversation through open-ended questions. I also added time limits to keep the conversation moving, so the book club meeting will always be less than 20 minutes. If they aren’t sure what SchoolAI is asking them to talk about, they can ask it to rephrase the question.

Teachers looking for fun discussion techniques to help students engage in these small group conversations should check out Catlin’s Discussion Techniques Choice Board!

Powerful Teacher Dashboard

SchoolAI’s built-in teacher dashboard provides real-time data about my students’ interactions with the chatbot. Visuals like emojis and one-sentence summaries of the interactions let me see how my students are doing at a glance. I can pull a group of students to clear up a common misunderstanding, provide additional instruction, or use this information to adjust tomorrow’s lesson based on how students did today.

Below is an example of the SchoolAI dashboard sharing results from an activity. This brief feedback can inform your next lesson.

Teachers looking for a strategy to facilitate differentiated small-group instructional sessions based on this data can check out Catlin’s work on the station rotation model.

Multiplying Ourselves with AI

It’s no secret that meeting the individual needs of every child every day is near impossible. But what if AI tools like SchoolAI, when used well, could offer students immediate and personalized feedback the moment they need it, freeing us to work with other students to help them achieve their learning goals? I envision SchoolAI activities seamlessly integrating into blended learning models like station rotation or playlists! 

As educators, we can use AI to support our instruction, freeing up time to focus on building relationships with our students and providing more individualized attention. Our students’ futures are embedded with AI, so our classrooms should help them learn how this powerful technology can be used as tools for learning and personal growth in school rather than simply tools for cutting corners. 

If you have questions or want to connect with Jeff Hennigar, you can find him on X or BlueSky.