AI Projects for English Teachers

You are an experienced English department chair reviewing a colleague's course, and I want the real problems rather than encouragement.

Here is my full year: [paste your unit list, the texts you teach, and your major assessments].
Grade level: [grade]. My standards are [state or framework].

Do four things, in this order:
1. List every standard I hit three or more times, and every standard I never touch at all.
2. Tell me which units are doing the same work as each other, so I can combine or cut.
3. Look at my text list and tell me what it assumes about who my students are: whose experiences are centered, whose are missing, and what a student in my room might go a whole year without seeing.
4. Give me the three highest-value changes I could make without rewriting the year, ranked by impact, with the cost of each.

Ask me any question you need before you start. Be direct.

Act as an instructional designer who works in backward design.

Here is the final assessment my students will complete at the end of this unit: [paste the essay prompt, project description, or rubric].
The unit runs [number] weeks. My class is [grade level] English, meeting [number] times a week for [number] minutes.

Work backward from that assessment:
1. Break it into every discrete skill a student must already have in order to succeed on it.
2. Sort those skills into the order they have to be taught, noting which ones depend on earlier ones.
3. Map them onto my calendar week by week, and tell me which week is overloaded.
4. Name the two checkpoints where I should find out whether students are actually ready, and what each checkpoint should ask them to do.

Do not write lesson plans yet. I want the skeleton first, and I want to know where it is too tight.

I need three versions of one essay prompt for [grade level] English.

The text is [title and author]. The skill I am assessing is [Ex. tracing how an author develops a theme across a text].

Write three prompts that assess that same skill about that same text, differing only in how much support they give:
- Version A names the evidence to use and the claim structure to follow.
- Version B names the type of claim to make but leaves the evidence to the student.
- Version C gives only the question.

For each version, add one sentence telling me which student it is for and what it deliberately does not scaffold.

Use the same key vocabulary in all three, so students reading each other's essays are speaking the same language. Keep every version answerable in [number] paragraphs.

Write a substitute plan for one [number] minute period of [grade level] English.

Context: we are in the middle of [text or unit], students have already [what they have done so far], and the sub has no English background and has never met this class.

The plan must:
- Be a real lesson that moves the unit forward. Not a worksheet, not a movie.
- Require nothing from the sub except reading directions aloud and circulating.
- Include a reading or writing task students can complete independently, plus something real for the students who finish early.
- Produce something I can collect and actually use on Monday.

Give me: a timed agenda, the exact words the sub should say to open class, the student handout ready to copy, and two sentences on what to do if the room gets loud.

I want to teach [title and author] to my [grade level] English class, and I need to build it into a real unit.

Help me do that:
1. Tell me what this text is genuinely good for teaching: which skills and standards it supports better than the texts already in my curriculum. My standards are [state or framework].
2. Flag the specific passages that will be hard for students at this level, and what they will need in order to get through them.
3. Tell me honestly where this text is a weak fit, and what I would be giving up by teaching it instead of something else.
4. Sketch a [number] week arc: the essential question, the sequence of chunks, and the final assessment.
5. List the content a family might raise a concern about, and what I should be ready to say.

Be candid in step 3. I already like this book, so what I need from you is the argument against it.

I teach [title and author] to [grade level] students. The theme or question we center is [theme].

Give me three companion texts: one poem, one piece of nonfiction or journalism, and one primary source or first-person account.

Requirements:
- Each one should complicate or push back on the novel, not just echo its theme.
- Each should be short enough to read and discuss in a single period.
- All three must be real and findable. Give me the exact title, author, date, and where I can find it. If you are not certain a text exists as you have described it, say so plainly instead of guessing.

For each pairing, write the one question I should ask that puts the two texts into actual conflict, and note which of the three is the strongest pairing if I only have time for one.

Build me a bank of 30 bell-ringers for [grade level] English, each designed to take five minutes at the start of class.

We are studying [text or unit]. The skills I want to keep warm are [Ex. sentence-level grammar, vocabulary in context, quick-write fluency, close reading].

Rules:
- Every bell-ringer must connect to the current unit's content or vocabulary. No generic practice.
- Vary the type across the bank: quick-writes, one-sentence analysis, error hunts, vocabulary in context, a single line or image to react to.
- Each one must give students a task they can start without me explaining it.
- No bell-ringer should need more than five minutes to review afterward.

Format as a numbered list. For each: the prompt exactly as students will see it, then a five-word note on what it practices.

You are giving feedback on one student draft. Read my rubric first, then the draft.

Rubric: [paste your rubric].
Assignment: [paste the prompt].
Grade level: [grade].
Draft: [paste the draft with the student's name removed].

Respond with exactly this and nothing else:
1. Two specific strengths, each one quoting the sentence or move that earned it.
2. The single revision that would most improve this piece, with one concrete example of what it would look like in this draft.
3. One question I should ask this student in a conference.

Rules: address the writing, never the writer. Do not rewrite the draft for them. Do not give a grade or a score. Keep it under 150 words, at a reading level this student can actually use.

Write three model responses to this assignment for [grade level] English: one that would score at the top of my rubric, one solidly in the middle, and one that is a common near-miss.

Assignment: [paste the prompt].
Rubric: [paste the rubric].
Text: [title and author].
Length: about [number] words each.

Then annotate all three. After each one, list the specific moves that put it at that level, using my rubric's own language. For the near-miss, name exactly what it is doing that looks like analysis but is not.

Write them so they sound like real students at this grade, including the small awkwardness real writing has. Do not write three versions of the same essay. Each should make different choices.

Write a flawed student essay for my [grade level] English class to revise.

Assignment: [paste the prompt].
Text: [title and author].
Length: about [number] words.

Plant exactly these problems, one clear instance of each: [Ex. a thesis that only restates the prompt, a floating quotation with no lead-in, a body paragraph that stops after the evidence with no analysis, a missing counterclaim, a conclusion that introduces a brand new idea].

The essay must be otherwise competent, so the planted flaws are the interesting part rather than the whole thing being weak. It should sound like a real student at this grade.

Do not label or hint at the flaws in the student copy. Then, separately, give me an answer key: each planted flaw, where it appears, why it is a problem, and what a good fix looks like.

I need targeted grammar practice for a [grade level] student whose writing shows these recurring errors: [Ex. comma splices, subject-verb agreement across an intervening phrase, vague pronoun reference].

For each error, give me:
1. A one-sentence explanation a student can actually understand, using no grammar term I have not already taught.
2. Two correct examples and two incorrect ones, side by side, so the difference is visible rather than described.
3. Ten practice sentences containing that error for the student to fix, using vocabulary and content from [current text or unit] so it feels like class instead of a worksheet.
4. Three sentences that are already correct, mixed in, so the student has to decide rather than assume every sentence is broken.

Give me the answer key separately, at the end, with a one-line reason for each correction.

I have a four-minute writing conference with a student and I want to walk in prepared.

Draft: [paste it, name removed].
What I have noticed about this writer over time: [Ex. strong ideas, avoids revision, writes one draft and stops].
Assignment and rubric: [paste].

Give me:
1. The one thing to praise first, quoted directly from the draft.
2. The two questions to ask that would get the student to find the problem themselves instead of me naming it.
3. The single next step to leave them with, phrased as something they will do in the next fifteen minutes.
4. What I should deliberately not bring up in this conference, and why.

Keep the whole thing to one short page. I am reading it in the hallway thirty seconds before the conference.

Build student-facing revision checklists for these genres: [Ex. argument, literary analysis, narrative, research writing].

Grade level: [grade].

For each genre:
- Six to eight items maximum. A twenty-item checklist does not get used.
- Phrase every item as an action the student takes on their own draft, not a quality to assess. Not "is your thesis strong" but "underline your thesis. Does it say something a reasonable person could disagree with?"
- Order them from whole-draft concerns down to sentence-level ones, so students fix structure before commas.
- Include one item unique to that genre that students at this level routinely miss.

Write at a reading level my students can use without me translating it, and keep each item to one line.

Here is a passage my [grade level] students need to read: [paste the passage, with title and author].

Produce three versions:
- One at grade level, edited only for clarity.
- One about two grades below, with shorter sentences and simpler syntax.
- One about two grades above, or leave the original if it is already there.

Rules:
- Every version keeps the same ideas, the same argument, and the same key vocabulary, so all three groups can discuss the same thing.
- Reduce the complexity of the sentences, never the complexity of the thought.
- After each version, list what you changed and, honestly, what nuance was lost in the process.

Then give me three questions I can ask all three groups, worded identically for each.

Here is the chapter or passage my [grade level] students are about to read: [paste it].

Pull the vocabulary that will actually block comprehension, then sort it into three tiers:
1. Words they must know to follow the passage at all.
2. Words worth teaching because they will meet them again in other reading.
3. Words they can infer from context or skip entirely.

For every word in tiers 1 and 2, give me: a student-friendly definition in plain language, the exact sentence it appears in from this passage, and one more sentence using it in a different context.

Skip words that are obvious from context, and skip proper nouns unless they matter. I would rather have twelve words that matter than forty that do not.

Write discussion questions on [title and author], [chapter or section], for [grade level] students.

Give me four questions at each of these levels, clearly labeled:
- Literal: answerable by pointing at the text.
- Inferential: requires connecting two moments in the text.
- Analytical: about the author's choices and the effect they create.
- Evaluative: asks the student to judge, and can honestly be answered more than one way.

Requirements: every question must be specific to this section, not something that could be asked of any book. Apart from the literal ones, no question should have a single obvious right answer. For each evaluative question, tell me the two positions a class is most likely to split between.

Plan a Socratic seminar for my [grade level] English class on [text and section]. We have [number] minutes and [number] students.

Give me:
1. One opening question that cannot be answered with a summary and that students will genuinely disagree about.
2. Five follow-up questions, in the order I should reach for them, each pushing the conversation deeper rather than sideways.
3. The exact move to make when the discussion stalls, and the exact move when two students take it over.
4. Three specific passages to have ready for redirecting students back into the text, with page or chapter references.
5. One way to hold the quiet students accountable that does not put them on the spot in front of the room.

Also tell me what a good seminar on this text should end up arguing about, so I can tell afterward whether it worked.

Write a catch-up script for a [grade level] student who missed [number] days of our unit on [text].

Here is what we covered: [list the chapters read, what the class concluded, the vocabulary introduced, and any assignment given].

Write it as something I can record in under three minutes or hand over as a single page. It should:
- Cover what happened in the text, plainly.
- Tell the student what the class decided or argued about, so they can rejoin the conversation rather than just knowing the plot.
- Name what they need to do to be caught up, as a short list, with what to do first clearly marked.
- Sound like a person talking to them, not a study guide.

No guilt about the absence, and no "as you would have learned if you were here."

Here is the passage my [grade level] students will annotate: [paste it, with title and author].

Build an annotation guide for this specific passage. Not a generic template.

Give me:
1. Three or four things to mark, each tied to something actually happening in this passage. Name what to mark and, in one sentence, why it matters here.
2. A symbol or short code for each, simple enough to remember without a key.
3. Two examples worked for them: a real line from this passage, marked, with the one-sentence margin note a strong student would write beside it.
4. The two moments in this passage most students will read straight past, and the question to write in the margin at each.
5. One question at the end that can only be answered well by a student who actually annotated.

Every mark should produce a thought. No highlighting for its own sake.

Write an essay response to this assignment that is technically competent and genuinely hollow.

Assignment: [paste the prompt].
Text: [title and author].
Grade level: [grade].
Rubric: [paste it].

It should have clean grammar, a clear five-part structure, and real quotations, but no actual insight: observation in place of argument, evidence that is described rather than analyzed, and claims no reasonable person would dispute.

Do not make it obviously bad. It should look like a strong essay until a student reads closely. Do not add any note or disclaimer.

Then, separately, give me an answer key: the exact points where a careful reader should lose confidence in it, and the rubric rows where it should score low despite looking polished.

Write a confident 400-word study-guide analysis of [title and author] for [grade level] students. Include at least six direct quotations with chapter references, plus specific claims about the author's life, the book's publication, and its early reception.

Write it entirely from memory. Do not look anything up, do not hedge, and do not flag anything as uncertain. Use the assured voice of a published study guide.

I am asking for this deliberately. My students are going to verify every quotation and every factual claim against the actual text and real sources, and find what you got wrong. So do not correct yourself, do not soften any claim, and do not add a disclaimer at the end.

After my students have finished, I will come back and ask you to grade your own accuracy.

Write a passage of about [number] words imitating the style of [author], in the manner of [title].

Match what you can: sentence rhythm, diction, imagery, point of view, and the preoccupations the author keeps returning to. The situation is [brief description of the scene].

Write only the passage. No preamble, no explanation, no note about your limitations, no title.

I am giving this to my [grade level] students alongside a real passage from the book. They will identify what the imitation gets right and what it cannot reach. After they have done that, I will come back and ask you what you think you missed.

Help me write an email to a family. Draft it three times: warm, neutral, and firm.

Situation: [describe it plainly, using the student's initials only].
What I need from this email: [Ex. a meeting, a signature, awareness, a change at home].
What I do not want: [Ex. the student punished at home, the family feeling accused].
What I know about this family: [Ex. English is not their first language, previous contact went badly, they are very involved].

Rules for all three versions:
- State facts. Never adjectives about the child.
- One clear ask, near the top.
- Assume the family wants to help and does not have the full picture.
- Under 200 words. No jargon, no "per our conversation."

At the end, tell me which version you would send and why.

Build me a progress-report comment bank for [grade level] English.

The skills I report on are [Ex. reading comprehension, textual analysis, writing organization, use of evidence, revision habits, participation].

For each skill, write five comments at each of these levels: exceeding, meeting, approaching, and not yet meeting.

Rules:
- Every comment names a specific skill or behavior. Never effort, attitude, or personality.
- Every comment must be true of a real student and impossible to swap into a different level.
- Each one includes a concrete next step.
- Use [NAME] as a placeholder so I can drop in a name and pronoun.
- Nothing that would embarrass a student reading it over a parent's shoulder.
- Two sentences maximum each.

Group them by skill, then by level, so I can find one fast.

I am being formally observed teaching this lesson: [paste your plan].

My evaluation framework is [Ex. Danielson, Marzano, or paste the rubric].
Class details: [grade level, class size, and anything my evaluator should know about this group].

Help me prepare:
1. Write the pre-conference explanation: what I am doing, why this lesson at this point in the unit, and what I expect students to struggle with.
2. Name the specific teacher moves already in my plan that map to my framework's language, so I can point at them by name.
3. Tell me the three things an evaluator is most likely to mark down in this lesson, and whether each one is worth fixing or worth defending.
4. Write the two questions I should ask in the post-conference so the feedback is useful instead of just a score.

Be blunt in step 3.

Recommend books for pleasure reading. Not for class, not for a grade.

The reader: [grade level], reading roughly at [level, or "at grade level" if you are not sure].
What they like outside of books: [Ex. horror movies, basketball, true crime podcasts, drawing, cars, anime].
Books they have actually finished and liked: [titles, or "none I know of"].
Books they abandoned: [titles, if you know any].
Constraints: [Ex. must be findable in a school library, nothing over 300 pages, content limits].

Give me eight books. For each: title, author, page count, roughly what reading level, and two sentences on why this specific reader would like it, connected to their interests rather than to a theme.

Rules:
- Only real books. If you are not certain a title exists as you describe it, say so instead of guessing.
- Include at least two graphic novels or verse novels, and at least two nonfiction titles.
- Nothing recommended only because it is a classic or is good for them.
- Range the difficulty, and mark the one to hand them first.

Help me prioritize. Here is everything on my plate: [dump it all, unsorted, with deadlines where you know them and student initials instead of names].

Sort it into four groups:
1. Do today, because something breaks if I do not.
2. Do this week, in the order I should do them.
3. Can wait, with the date it stops being able to wait.
4. Should not be my job, or can be done imperfectly and still be fine.

For everything in groups 1 and 2, estimate how long it will actually take, and tell me whether it needs a real block of time or can happen in the gaps between classes.

Then tell me the one thing on this list I am avoiding, and the smallest possible first step on it.

Be realistic about my day. I teach [number] classes and have [number] minutes of planning time.