Home AI lesson plan
Free · 40 minutes · Classes 4–12

A 40-minute AI lesson
you can run tomorrow

No preparation, no slides to make, no software to install. One link, four sections, and a set of discussion questions that work whether or not you know anything about AI yourself.

40 minutesNo prep neededWorks without a labAnswers included
Open the activity Open it once yourself first — it takes about ten minutes and you will teach it far better.

What this lesson achieves

By the end, students can explain what an AI model is actually doing, and can recognise a confidently wrong answer rather than accepting it.

That is the whole objective, and it is deliberately narrow. A lesson that lists ten AI tools is out of date in a term. A lesson that explains next-word prediction is still true in five years.

The forty minutes

1
0–5 min · Ask, do not tell. "Who has used ChatGPT? Who can tell me in one sentence what it is doing when it answers?" Take three answers. Do not correct any of them. Write them on the board — you will come back to these at the end.
2
5–20 min · They do Level 1, stops 1 to 5. Students work in pairs on one device. Circulate. Do not explain anything; the activity explains itself after each step. Stop the class at stop 5, the invented book.
3
20–30 min · The discussion. This is the actual lesson. Use the questions below. The invented-book activity is the hook — most classes are genuinely unsettled by it, which is the correct response.
4
30–38 min · Stops 6 to 11. Students finish the level. Stop 7, where a page falls off the desk, is the second big moment — watch for the noise when the answer changes.
5
38–40 min · Back to the board. Return to the three answers from minute one. Ask which they would now change. That comparison is the assessment.

Discussion questions, with the answers you need

"Why did it invent a whole book?"

Because you asked. It continues text, and your question was a shape that needed filling. It was not lying — lying requires knowing the truth. Follow-up: ask when this would matter most. Answer: when they know least about the topic, which is exactly when they were relying on it.

"How would you know it was wrong?"

You could not, from the answer alone — it is written in exactly the same handwriting as a correct answer. You have to check the source. Follow-up: which things does it invent most and students check least? Names, dates, numbers, citations.

"So is it useless?"

No — and this is the important correction. It is excellent at anything made of language: summarising, rewriting, translating, finding. It is weak at arithmetic, at facts about the world, and at anything somebody must answer for. Follow-up: ask for one example of each from their own homework.

"Is using it for homework cheating?"

Turn this back to the class rather than answering it. Ask them to draw the line themselves, then compare with your school's rule. The distinction most classes reach on their own: using it to understand something is different from using it to produce something you then claim you wrote.

Practical notes from classrooms that have run it

Pairs beat individuals — the arguments about whether an answer is right are where the thinking happens
Do not pre-teach the vocabulary. The activity names each idea only after students have felt it, and naming it first spoils the moment
Have one device per pair; it works on phones if the lab is booked
If you are short of time, stops 1 to 5 alone make a complete lesson
Resist explaining stop 5. The silence after students realise the book does not exist is doing your job for you
You do not need to know anything about AI to teach this. The activity does the explaining and the answers above cover every question we have seen a class ask. Several teachers have told us they learnt as much as the students did, which we take as a compliment.

Questions teachers ask

Can I run this without internet in the classroom?No — it runs in a browser and needs a connection. Level 1 is light and works on a slow one.
What if students finish early?Point them at Level 2, where they write a real prompt and a real AI answers it. It is another 20 minutes and stands alone.
Can I use this material in my own slides?Yes. Use it, adapt it, credit us if you are publishing it. If you would like the discussion questions as a printable sheet, ask and we will send one.
Do you run sessions for schools?Yes — facilitated sessions and teacher training, in person or online. The course itself stays free either way.

Run it yourself first

Ten minutes with Level 1 will tell you more about whether this suits your class than anything on this page.

Open the activity