How to use AI for lesson planning without losing your judgement

More teachers are asking me how to use AI for lesson planning. Some are excited about the time it might save. Others worry that it will produce bland, generic lessons, or that using it is somehow cheating. Both reactions make sense. AI can be a useful planning assistant, but only if you stay firmly in charge of the thinking.

Before anything else, check your school's guidance. If your school has an AI policy, follow it. If it does not, ask your leaders what is expected, particularly around which tools are approved and what information can be shared.

Start with what you want students to learn

The most common mistake is to open an AI tool and type "make me a lesson on photosynthesis". You will get something that looks finished and teaches very little. A good lesson starts with your judgement. What should students know or be able to do by the end? What do they already understand? Where are they likely to go wrong?

Decide those things first. Then use AI to help with the parts that take time but not much expertise. The professional decisions stay with you.

How to use AI for lesson planning, step by step

Give it context. Tell the tool the age group, the topic, the learning objective and what students covered last lesson. The more specific you are, the more useful the response will be. Never include student names or any personal information.

Ask for options, not answers. Instead of one lesson plan, ask for three different ways to introduce a concept, or five misconceptions students might hold. Then choose, combine and adapt.

Use it for the time-consuming extras. AI is often good at drafting retrieval questions, writing a worked example, producing a short reading at two levels of difficulty or suggesting a hinge question to check understanding. These are tasks where a first draft saves real time.

Check everything. AI tools can state incorrect facts with complete confidence. Read every question, example and explanation as carefully as you would a resource from a stranger on the internet. If you would not put your name to it, do not use it.

Make it yours. Add the examples your students relate to, the stories you tell well and the questions you know will spark discussion. That is the part no tool can do for you.

Where AI does not belong in planning

AI cannot know your class. It does not know which student needs extra encouragement, which group works badly together or what happened in yesterday's lesson. Decisions about adaptation, support and challenge are yours.

Be careful, too, about letting AI decide the sequence of a whole unit. Curriculum thinking, deciding what comes first and why, is some of the most important professional work teachers do. Use AI to test your thinking if you like, but do not hand that work over.

A note for middle leaders

If you lead a department, this is a good moment to agree some shared expectations. Which tools are approved? What should never be entered into them? How will you share prompts and resources that work well? A short conversation in a department meeting can save a lot of uncertainty later, and it helps less confident colleagues feel included rather than left behind.

Over more than twenty years in education, I have seen plenty of tools promise to transform teaching. The ones that last are the ones that support good teachers rather than replace their judgement. AI can be one of those, if we use it well.

So here is a question to try this week. Which planning task takes you the most time for the least professional thought, and could AI give you a sensible first draft of it?

Enjoyed this article? Get new leadership articles by email on Substack.