As you may have read, I’ve been creating an academic English syllabus for KS3 EAL intensive provision. This has been an AI-assisted project, and you can catch up on (most of) the process through this tag. Anyhow, after a brief pause, I’ve cracked on with the next BIG step – creating a sample unit.
You can download the sample unit here:
What’s included:
- Unit overview docs for teachers and learners
- Complete resources (slides, handouts, teacher notes, listening files, etc) for 10 lessons, plus an assessment for lesson 11. Teachers make their own feedforward.
- Collated lesson workbook if easier; Vocabulary record book
Okay, so here are some honest reflections on the process.
Effort
This is the first unit I’ve created. With everything being new, things have to be VERY hands-on with AI. It’s been quite a long process to be honest. But now AI has a lot of the production workflow in place, so that should make later units much easier.
ChatGPT is out for design (then back in!)
The lessons don’t look all-singing-all-dancing. I wanted a clean and consistent feel to them and went with that above lots of decorative stuff. Example:
This is a particularly dense slide set haha, although most of them include at least 4 slides of ‘learning journey’. Anyhow, I used Claude for this design as ChatGPT designs looked awful. Until…
Claude told me it was rubbish at image generation compared to ChatGPT. So, Claude fed me image briefs for ChatGPT and I passed them on. Then Chatty would rinse the brief a bit, then Claude would complain about the images that came back. It kind of felt like I was sending messages between two close friends that were previously a couple but had fallen out and now hated each other, and I was stuck in the middle.
Speaking of images:
Most people in AI-generated images these days have roughly the correct amount of fingers. A vast improvement. I’m not sure how I sit with the image creation overall, but I ran with it for this example. One to consider moving forward, I think. I kept some AI classics in there just for your amusement – like a row of 6 students all using their calculators in the exact same stance – that made me chuckle.
Adherence to brief
You know what? Not bad. The lessons seem looooong in parts, but they do meet pretty much all the criteria we outlined. Plus, the length is often to do with the fact that I asked for lots of scaffolding in the slides. In practice, I can see teachers stripping some of this back for sure. I was particularly happy with our level of vocab recycling, often implicitly throughout the resources. I’ve summarised that in the Unit overview doc for you:
Challenge
Well, we are aiming for quite a lot here. Sweeping up vocab that may have otherwise been introduced in earlier years, getting current curriculum language into play, developing fluency, etc. The various examples I’ve given from Science, Geog, etc, are accessible, but I wouldn’t say simply ‘easy’ if you consider the language tasks around them. And that was the main driver for the unit. So, play to learner strengths and have them confident with the content, so we can then upskill language-wise. I think it fits.
Linking to assessment
I wanted all lessons to build to the final assessment. I realised that some just needed to build context though, and were useful in their own right. So, there are a couple of lessons in the sequence (Lesson 2, Lesson 5) which you could say are optional. Possibly….
Listening!
Okay, so I didn’t shy away from this! This unit didn’t include many listening texts compared to others, but it was impossible to avoid creating actual scripts and audio files. This unit gave me the nudge. I remembered Ross Thorburn’s suggestions re: ElevenLabs – very easy to make audio through there. Top tip though – have your scripts fully ready, including any markup (square brackets for directions and tone, etc) because regenerating texts a lot can rinse your available credits. So can generating multiple voices and not realising how many credits that takes! Ha, you live and learn. Anyhow, highly recommend this tool, thanks again Ross.
Wraparound
Ha! I couldn’t leave you longing for a coursebook, could I? After ALL this effort! So, there’s plenty of fluff included. We’ve got teacher notes that are pithy and won’t be read, homework challenges that will get ignored, vocabulary books that will waste paper – it’s all in there. I might even create an online resource platform that you’ll never access, just for authenticity.
Verdict so far
It’s quite dense. It’ll cover a good 3 weeks of one-lesson-a-day intensives, which I think is maxed out for this particular topic, done in this particular way. It needs some tweaking, but I’d put it at a 6.5 or 7/10 for starters. Creating this unit has certainly answered some of my questions about this process and has taught me a lot about AI use for sure.
Anyway, feedback much appreciated, and more units to follow.
Categories: General, materials writing, teacher development
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