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I also found it important to use AI for SEN students. I will be using it more this year to build social stories and to create individualized lesson plans for students who may be struggling with socializing with peers, etc. I also find AI helpful for small group reading instruction. You can easily create lessons that are meaningful and engaging. I liked the lesson plan you chose on the Vikings, it is thorough and would be easy to integrate into the daily plans.
This course has provided us with a plethora of resources in which we can incorporate AI into our every day practice. I will be an SET working with junior infants for maths, reading, and social support; and fourth class social group this year. I can’t wait to use ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google apps for education for my weekly planning. AI is an easy way to incorporate innovative and engaging ideas into the curriculum. For my small groups I can use AI in order to build a small group reading lesson through UFLI for students who need extra support. I can use it to build maths lessons that help students with problem solving and to encourate critical thinking. Collaborating with colleagues is another area that is important in education. I will use this time to help teach my colleagues about AI technologies and resources that are available. Our school also uses Twinkl, the ARI AI tool within this website will be fun to explore as well.
Below is a UFLI lesson plan for Junior Infants, I used Gemini to create this lesson plan.
Lesson Plan: Early Phonics & Letter Recognition (UFLI Foundations Aligned)
Target Group: Junior Infants (Small Group, 3–4 students needing extra support)
Duration: 15–20 minutes
UFLI Concepts & Target Graphemes: /s/ , /a/ , /t/ , /p/
Structure: Adapted from the 8-Step UFLI Small Group Intervention Cycle (Condensed for Early Learners)Materials Needed
UFLI Grapheme Cards (s, a, t, p)
Individual magnetic boards / letter tiles (s, a, t, p) or dry-erase boards
Sensory tracing tray (sand, salt, or textured mat)
Hand mirrors
UFLI Word Cards or Picture Sound CardsLesson Structure
1. Phonemic Awareness Warm-Up (2–3 minutes)
Sound Isolation & Articulation: Hold up a target letter card (e.g., ). Model the sound: “/s/”.
Mirror Work: Have students look in their mirrors as they say /s/. Direct attention to mouth formation: “Teeth together, tongue behind teeth, unvoiced wind sound.”
Blending Drive: Say sounds orally: /s/ – /a/ – /t/ Have students blend to say “sat”.
2. Visual & Auditory Drill (3 minutes)
Visual Drill (Grapheme Flash): Flash grapheme cards (s, a, t, p). Students state the letter name, key word, and sound in unison: “s, sun, /s/”.
Auditory Drill (Sound to Letter): Teacher says: “The sound is /a/. What letter?” Students write or point to the grapheme .
3. Multi-Sensory Concept & Letter Formation (5 minutes)
Explicit Model (UFLI Cueing): Write on the board while describing the stroke: “Start at the top line, down to the baseline, cross in the middle.”
Sky-Writing & Trace: Students sky-write the letter using big arm movements while chanting: “t says /t/”.
Sensory Tray Tracing: Trace the grapheme in a sand/salt tray using two fingers while making the target sound.
4. Word Building & Manipulative Practice (5 minutes)
Letter Tile Board: Each student has tiles for s, a, t, p.
Teacher Dictation & Step-by-Step Building:
“Build the word at.” Students pull down a and t.
“Touch and say the sounds:” /a/ – /t/ at.
“Change at to sat.” Students identify the initial sound missing and add s to the front.
Repeat with pat and tap.
5. Dictation & Wrap-Up (3 minutes)
Sound & Word Dictation:
Dictate 2 sounds for students to write on mini whiteboards: /p/ and /s/.
Dictate 1 high-frequency / CVC word using mastered sounds: pat.
Quick Check: Finger-tap the sounds together to verify spelling before clearing boards.UFLI Differentiation & Support Strategies
For High Support: Stick strictly to single-letter sound associations before moving to CVC word building; use continuous sound blending (ssss-aaaa-tttt) rather than segmenting.
For Extension: Introduce simple UFLI heart words/sight words that share these sounds (e.g., a, the), or build 3-letter continuous blend chains (at sat pat tap).I also liked this activity! It was a great way to teach students about bias in newspapers, and how to acurately cite sources. I liked your ideas about use for researching about the famine. With ChatGPT the options are endless!
Teaching AI concepts to primary pupils is all about presenting the information in a structured, informative and positive manner. At home, students are used to using their devices for watching YouTube, playing on Roblox, or chatting with their friends on Snapchat.
So, from a teaching point of view, it is pertinent to teach children digital citizenship in a way that they can use it for educational purposes as well. I really enjoyed the scenario of the 1916 Easter Rising newspaper articles. It is crucial for students to learn about bias in education and how to correctly identify real or false information. Chat GPT and Gemini are great tools to introduce to students through literacy and historical events.
This year I will be working with Junior Infants as an SET, so they won’t have a lot of screen time with me, but I can offer rewards through Khan Academy Kids, RoboGarden and Scratch Jr. Each of these sites look fun and engaging. If I were working with older students, Google Teachable Machine looks like a hands on way for students to show their understanding of science concepts. There are so many educational and engaging AI tools out there!
MagicSchool looks like a fantastic webiste for teachers! As an SET I will definitely be using this site to generate reading passages and narrative stories for small group instruction. Our school doesn’t have access to YouTube just yet, so I’m hoping we can get on board soon! The educational video tools looked very handy.
Part 1
There were several good AI generative tools in Module 3. Magic School AI and Gamma AI both caught my eye. With Magic School AI, there is a plethora of tools that classroom teachers can use to enhance lesson plans, rubrics, social story creation and even maths story word problems.
With Gamma AI teachers can use this tool to create PowerPoints and slides to enhance student engagement and to make it easier for teachers to present the curriculum to students.
Part 2
As I mentioned above there are a lot of great AI tools out there for teachers to use to enhance their teaching, and increase student engagement. Diffit for teachers was another tool that stuck out to me. This tool can provide differentiated instructional materials and leveled content for students. As an SET this site would be helpful for small group instruction and make it easy to create leveled content to fit the learners’ needs.
I did find all of the microsoft content challenging, our school is a Google platform school, so we use the Google Suite for education tools. I personally don’t have a microsoft account, so I’m unable to use these apps. Maybe it would be beneficial for me to open a Microsoft account in order to access these tools. On the other hand, there are so many AI options out there, it’s tricky to choose the best one, especially if cost is involved. Schools will need to be on board with purchasing certain AI tools which can benefit all stakeholders.
I also agree that China is taking AI too far in the classroom. It’s sad that students are expected to perform at such high levels. School should be a place for studnets to play, explore, collaborate and have fun while learning. I also found it interesting that all parents in the classroom had access to everyone’s learning and output. Ethically this would definitely be a breach of data and would bring about privacy and bias concerns.
This module provided a plethora of AI websites that can be used to enhance, engage, and support teachers and learners. AI can personalize learning for students struggling with maths, reading, languages, etc. I was blown away by the number of websites available to schools and educators.
As an SEN small group instructor for reading, maths and EAL support these websites would be a helpful tool to support student learning and to provide personalized, differentiated instruction. The main problem I would see with these sites is the cost. A school would need to be on board with funding a program and it would need to be used ethically, with integrity and also with teachers leading the instruction and support.
I have experience using personalized learning platforms with my students. Google Classroom, Immersive Readers and Microsoft learning tools can provide teachers and students with different ways to represent their understanding of the curriculum. I have used Flip-Grid in the past, and the students love this way of presenting information to the class! It’s engaging, immersive and fun for all learners to showcase their curricular knowledge.
I have also used AI this past year to help with lesson plans, emails, etc. I found it difficult at first to fine tune my responses in order to get the best results. It is a definite work in progress with trying to find the exact information needed for certain tasks, projects, and specific lesson plans as well. I can’t wait to use Pictory and Gemini more this year in my classroom as well!
I found this introductory module to AI quite interesting. I had no idea that it spanned all the way back to the 1930’s! I use AI quite frequently for generating parent emails, report card comments, behaviour charts and also social stories. I have mostly used ChatGPT, so the comparisons of Copilot, ChatGPT & Gemini was eye opening. I definitely think Gemini provides more detailed responses overall. My husband is in the tech industry and he tends to use Gemini the most.
I really enjoyed exploring the Generative AI in education website. This provides a plethora of tools for use in the classroom. It will be beneficial for creating lesson plans, data mining of test scores, and to create more engaging powerpoints and videos for daily lessons. With AI it is crucial to use it in an ethical way for classroom efficiency, productivity and creativity. However, if AI is used without ethical guidelines it can cause more harm than good. As Sal Khan stated in his TED Talk, ‘AI can make a positive transformation for both students and teachers.’