Fourth grade after six years. Why I started creating lessons with AI

I will write this honestly.

At first, I felt like I was cheating a little.

This school year, I became a fourth-grade homeroom teacher for the first time in six years. Counting them up, this is my third time teaching fourth grade.

But the feeling of it being "been a while" was much bigger than I had expected.

After my last fourth-grade class, I taught sixth grade, then third grade, then second grade... I went through the whole cycle from the lower grades to the highest grade and came back.

When the grade level changes, what works for the children and where they stumble are completely different. When I stood in a fourth-grade classroom with the mindset of the highest grade, my "obvious" was not obvious at all. It was a start from remembering how to do things all over again.

And one more thing.

My last fourth-grade class was—interrupted by COVID halfway through.

School closures. Staggered attendance. The structure of my lessons was torn apart many times. "I wanted to finish this unit together with them until the end." I think that regret had been lingering somewhere inside me the whole time.

That is why this year, I had secretly made a decision.

I want to carry out a unit from beginning to end in one continuous line.

For a one-off lesson, I can manage with my experience so far. But a design that runs through the entire unit—setting up the introduction, connecting the children's thinking, and having it land properly at the end. To draw that in one continuous line, there was never enough time.

Every day, I was chased by the lessons in front of me and school duties, and before I knew it, the next unit had already started. A "consistent plan" was always just an ideal in the corner of my mind.

It was the beginning of April.

The first thing I consulted AI about was exactly that: "creating a learning plan." April 4th. It was almost the very first move after the school year started.

...That said, reality is not that pretty.

Even though I really wanted to carefully refine my unit plan, what was waiting for me in April was thecreation of materials for the parents' meetingthat was fast approaching.

Opening the class, health checkups, coordinating home visits, a mountain of paperwork. That turbulent April. It was no time for ideal unit design.

Even so, when I tried consulting it about the parents' meeting materials—I felt a positive response.

When I conveyed my desire of "what kind of class I want this to be," it properly put that into words and gave it back to me. A draft was created. I would correct it. And I would get feedback again on what I had corrected.

It was the moment when the work I had been shouldering alone from scratch turned into "creating together while consulting."

The initial feeling that I might be "cheating" disappeared immediately. On the contrary, I was able to use my brain for what I really wanted to think about, like "So, how should I structure this unit?" with the time I had freed up.

Instead of being pushed around by tools, I use tools to reclaim my own time. For me, that is where AI began.

In this series, I will write as honestly as possible for teachers in the field about:

• how I actually used it to complete a unit in a single, cohesive line

• what went well and what honestly flopped

• prompts I used as-is and the formats of teaching materials

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I won't talk about special skills. This is a record of trial and error by a homeroom teacher who returned to the fourth grade for the first time in six years.

I would be happy if teachers who also want to "properly complete a unit" could take something away from this, even if it's just one thing.

Next time, I will write about what I actually discussed and how I did it during the "learning plan creation" that became my first step.