Lesson planning takes time. We all know that. Crafting high-quality, engaging, and well-structured lessons that account for student misconceptions, differentiation, and assessment is an ongoing challenge.
What if we had a way to refine lesson plans before we even step into the classroom?
That’s exactly what I’ve been exploring in my latest free, practical guide, Refining Lesson Planning with AI.
Drawing on recent research, the guide walks teachers through a structured process for using AI as a lesson planning assistant. The guide aims to strengthen your planning by helping you anticipate misconceptions, refine questioning, improve explanations, check for understanding, and ensure clarity before delivering a lesson.
The study Exploring the Potential of LLM to Enhance Teaching Plans Through Teaching Simulation inspired this guide; my thanks to Carl Hendrick for originally sharing it. It’s made for some interesting reading and synthesis. You can read it yourself here.
What does the paper say?
“Reducing the difficulty, time, and effort for teachers to use LLM-based tools is crucial for advancing the widespread application of LLMs in teaching. Therefore, in this study, we adopted a prompt-based design approach, which allows ordinary teachers to easily implement the method. By using the role simulation and reflection-improvement capabilities of LLMs, we depicted the process of teacher-student interaction in the classroom.”
What does the guide include?
The guide includes:
✅ A step-by-step framework for using AI to refine lesson plans.
✅ Copy-and-paste prompts to simulate student responses.
✅ AI-generated teaching reflections to improve explanations, questioning, and differentiation.
✅ Practical strategies for embedding AI in your lesson planning workflow.
So whether you’re an experienced teacher wanting to test new strategies or an early-career teacher looking for structured support, I’ve tried to make a helpful guide designed to help.
I thought it worthy to mention that the research also says, “This study aims to leverage LLMs to enhance teaching plans prior to actual teaching, providing novice teachers with higher-quality teaching content and instructional ideas, thereby reducing potential educational risks arising from inadequate teaching preparation.”
Given the concerns some have, my included, about the domain knowledge required in order to use AI to its best, as referenced in Wiliam, Hattie and Hamilton’s paper, rather than Novice+AI being an issue, using a strategy such as this, could be a real help!
How else can I help?
AI’s role in education goes far beyond lesson planning. I work with schools and Trusts on AI implementation, teacher training, governance, and digital strategy to ensure AI is used effectively, ethically, and with real impact. If your school is looking for training, support, or strategic guidance on AI and edtech, I can help.
The guide is free to download here.
If you use it, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Why not drop a comment below or on LinkedIn or via my contact page?
