Using AI to deliver UDL and Differentiation in a Social Studies/Humanities Classroom

Learning Target: 

Participants can learn how to create differentiated lessons using the UDL framework by engaging in a variety of activities using AI to enhance student experiences.

Main ideas: 

– How can teachers use AI to increase student engagement?

Do Now  

– Without talking to anyone at your table.  

– Using the Post-It Notes at your table.  

– Write one event per Post-It note.  

– Name an important historical event.

ACTIVITY 1 

Organizing our ideas 

1. Quietly read everyone’s responses.  
2. Walk around the room and read all the responses at each table.  
3. If you see any you appreciate, go back to your table and write down the ideas on a Post-It note.  
4. Go back to your table:
   a. As a group, do the following:
   b. Decide on how you could organize these historical events by main idea topic/theme.
   c. Using another Post-It note, write the main idea/topic/theme, and place your historical events next to the appropriate main idea/topic/theme.

ACTIVITY 2  

Discussing the Essential Question and Generating Ideas  

Instructor-led  

1. SAS PX Middle School hosts a documentary film festival at a local theatre.  
2. Students create a 5 to 6 minute documentary based on the following Essential Questions:
   – How did a historical event have a significant impact on the future?
   – How did the historical event affect a significant population of people during the time of the event? (World/Country/Region)

3. In past years, a series of topics were given to students to choose from.  
4. However, based on the UDL framework and best practices, we wanted to give students more ownership, so we could create more engagement.  
5. The first year we decided to do this, the topics reflected the interests of the students. That said, we still had very traditional topics.  
6. During the 2023-2024 school year, we began to incorporate AI into our lessons to help with the brainstorming process. The result was that we had more unique topics than in past years:
   a. The creation of the Black Panther Party and its impact on the future of Hip Hop.
   b. The launch of Nintendo in the United States and its impact on the future of gaming.
   c. The invention of Pong and its impact on the gaming industry.

ACTIVITY 3  

Generating your interests 

1. On a piece of paper, write down as many of your personal interests as possible. During this process, you can be general or specific:
   a. For example, I enjoy sports, but I then may write down rugby, hockey, soccer.

ACTIVITY 4  

AI Chatbot Brainstorm  

1. Open the link to the MagicSchool or use the QR code.  
2. Choose one or two of your interests to help you brainstorm possible historical topics. Like the students, you will want to choose something that you would find engaging.  
3. Using the AI Generator Chatbot, ask it to help you locate topics:
   a. When I ask my own students to do this, I have them ask the chatbot to create a top ten list of historical events that relate to the topic.
   i. When doing this, reflect on:
   ii. How did you refine your search?
   iii. How can you refine your search to make the topic more personalized?
   iv. What was missing or who was missing?
   v. To what extent was the search culturally diverse?

ACTIVITY 5 

Confirming Credibility  

Reliability of information can sometimes be a problem when using AI. As a result, we want students to still use more credible sources when doing their research.  

1. Choose your historical event that you found from the AI Generator.  
2. Using Google Scholar or Google, find a source that supports the AI Generator topic.

ACTIVITY 6 

Differentiation and Lexile 

1. Open a word processor application such as Word or Google Docs.  
2. Copy and paste your article into the document.  
3. From the document, copy and paste parts of the article into the chatbot:
   a. Magic School will only take up to 1000 words at a time.
   b. You may have to do this a few times.
4. Have the chatbot change the Lexile level so the article is now appropriate for one of your students:
   a. Think about the different types of readers in one of your own classes.
   b. We still want to include important information from the text for the students, so they can still produce valuable research.

ACTIVITY 7 

Reflect 

1. How could you include some of these steps in a unit of work you plan on doing this year?  
2. What could you do to improve this process to make it more valuable to the students in your class?