AI in one class period

The lesson plan

Four parts in one period. The 45-minute plan shortens part 2; the 60-minute plan lengthens it and adds a 10-minute follow-up. For Grades 6-12: the playground demo suits Grades 6-9 best, and the Class Check has questions for Grades 6-8, 9-10 and 11-12.

1. Part 1: What is AI? (5 / 5 min)

   • Ask: "Where did you meet AI today?" Take three or four answers (recommendations, voice assistants, photo filters, chatbots).
   • Say: "In this lesson, AI means software that finds patterns in examples, instead of following rules a person wrote line by line."
   • Set the question for the lesson: "If we show a computer examples of two kinds of dots, what will it learn?" Ask for a prediction from a show of hands.

2. Part 2: Train Your First AI, on the projector (15 / 20 min)

   • Open the playground demo on the projector. It runs in the browser: no accounts and no student devices.
   • Invite volunteers to the front, or have the class call out where to click. Keys: 1 and 2 choose the kind of dot, R clears the board, D fills it with a demo set.
   • Round 1: place about five dots of each kind in two separate groups. Watch the accuracy figure and the step count. Ask: "What did it learn, and from what?"
   • Round 2: press R, then place the two kinds so they overlap. Predict first, then test: what happens to the accuracy? Why?
   • Round 3: press R and give the AI only a few examples of one kind. Ask the class to predict what it will do in the part of the board where it has seen no examples, then test it.
   • When the accuracy gets high, a panel appears with an app link. It is written for parents; you can click past it.

   Open Train Your First AI

3. Part 3: Class AI Literacy Check, Form A (15 / 15 min)

   • Open the Class AI Literacy Check, choose your grade band, Form A and the number of students present.
   • Hand out the printed A/B/C/D cards (one set per student or pair). Students hold up a card; you type how many chose each letter. No names, no student accounts.
   • Plan about a minute and a half per question. Keep the explanation short and save the discussion for part 4.

   Open the Class AI Literacy CheckPrint the A/B/C/D answer cards

4. Part 4: Discuss (10 / 10 min)

   • Open the class report. Pick the misconception the most students chose and read its question again.
   • Ask: "What did the AI in the playground learn from? Who chose the examples? What would you check before trusting an AI answer?"
   • Close by asking each pair for one sentence that starts "AI learns from..." (the worksheet has an exit-ticket line for this).

5. Part 5: Follow-up (60-minute plan only) (- / 10 min)

   • Run the 10-minute follow-up activity that the class report gives for your top misconception, or let students finish the worksheet.

Unplugged variant: Be the machine

No projector or no devices? Parts 1, 3 and 4 stay the same. Swap part 2 for "Be the machine". For part 3, read each Class Check question aloud from your own laptop or phone screen; students still answer with the printed cards.

You need

• About 12 blank cards or squares of paper, and a marker
• Two headings on the board: "Class A" and "Class B"
• The printed A/B/C/D answer cards
• The worksheet (the unplugged table on its second page)

Steps

1. Before class, secretly choose a sorting rule, such as "Class A cards have a circle in the drawing". Draw a simple picture on each card, some with a circle and some without.
2. Training: stick six example cards under their headings. In pairs, students write down their guess for the rule. They are the model, and the cards are the training data.
3. Testing: show four new cards one at a time. Each pair holds up A or B as its prediction. Reveal the true class and count how many pairs were right. Then reveal the rule.
4. Round 2, the trap: make a new example set in which the rule always comes with an accident, for instance every Class A card is also drawn in red. Test with a new card that breaks the accident (a red card with no circle). Ask the pairs what rule they actually learned, and why.
5. Discuss: a learner can only learn from the examples it is given. Who picks the examples? What happens when they are too few, or not fair?

Printable worksheet

Two pages: the playground rounds, the Class Check reflection and an exit ticket, then the unplugged table. It prints without the site header and footer, and there is a line for a name only if you want one.

Open the worksheet to print

Teacher checklist

Questions teachers ask