Week 4 Blog Assignment

 Part 1:

The lesson is aligned appropriately with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards and concepts, as well as with the correct grade level and subject area. This lesson also addresses ISTE students standards,  Knowledge Constructor, and Creative Communicator. The assessment portion is appropriately aligned with the objective and content area. Some improvements might be adding another question to the assessment portion to address the depth of the TEKS wording more accurately. 

The lesson plan is as rigorous as I prompted it to be. I would use this lesson as a base for my own lesson but would then include more difficult questioning and a creation component to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the content. For example, I asked Magic School to provide a lesson on character foils and help students make connections to literature, movies, and television. It created an effective lesson in identifying this concept and moved to practice and identify character foils independently. However, identification is the surface level of the TEK standard. I would move to the next step and have students analyze and explain how and why authors develop and use character foils in their work while explaining the author's purpose in including a character foil, then have students write and illustrate their own character foil. 

Lesson plan generated by Magic school - Magic School Lesson Plan Link

Part 2: 

Two of the AI-powered tools sparked my interest. The 5 E model lesson plan format is a non-negotiable district-wide initiative at my school. Having access to this tool will enable me to easily create lessons with the 5 E model as my focal point. This tool allows teachers to input standards and will create lesson plans based on the 5 E model with instructions and activities to engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. I also interacted with the exemplar and non-exemplar tool. I am always writing essays and short answer questions for my students to analyze before engaging in their own writing. This usually requires a significant amount of time. With the integration of this tool, I can effortlessly provide prompts and guidelines for tailored content and will quickly be provided with examples and nonexample models for my students.  

The tools are extremely useful, not just for time-saving measures for teachers but also for the success of students. Teachers having the ability to have high quality specific lessons and examples produced for student use enables students to have all of the materials and scaffolds they will need in order to flourish and frees up teachers time to provide more assistant and attention to students. 

For example, when my students begin writing open-ended and extended constructed responses, their writing is usually on a variety of different levels. I would use the exemplar and non-exemplar tools to create multiple writing pieces for the students to interact with. Students would separate the writing into categories- effective writing or ineffective writing. They would then discuss in groups the attributes of those pieces of writing. They would then emulate aspects of effective writing skills in their own writing while making a list of ineffective writing skills. I usually create exemplars and non-exemplars on my own, which is very time-consuming. However, with this tool, I could produce multiple examples for the students to interact with in a timely manner and easily have more produced when we start our next writing activity. 

Part 3: Reflection

Magic School is a helpful resource I would share with both my colleagues and students. My colleagues and I are constantly looking for time saving measures when creating lesson plans and providing students with feedback. My students can use the feedback tool to evaluate, revise, and edit their writing assignments as well as generate ideas about potential research topics. 

Challenges might include potential inaccuracies in information generated by the tools when creating lesson plans or providing feedback. Also, I have noticed that some students do not use AI to aid in success but rather as a person to do their assignments for them.

The advantages of Magic School significantly outweigh the drawbacks. The services provided by Magic School are a huge time saver and productivity enhancer, enabling teachers to create and use a diverse array of resources. Teachers appreciate anything and everything that saves time and enhances effectiveness in the classroom.

I have experience using AI in the classroom. Currently, I use Brisk. In recent years, I have had over 200 students in my class, which can be a daunting task when grading essays and providing feedback. Brisk is an AI tool that can be downloaded as a Chrome extension and integrated seamlessly into your existing applications- Google Docs, Google Classroom, Google Slides, etc. You can provide Brisk with a rubric or specific guidelines, and the tool will provide students feedback in the form of glows and grows in their writing assignments. Brisk also has the ability to enable teachers to change reading levels of text and create lesson plans and assignments.