Saving Time
As teachers, making use of the technology that is available to us is no bad thing in my opinion. I mean, why not make use of generative AI if it can save me a bag of time and provide a succinct and accurate set of learning activities for my students?
So here’s how AI helped me teach Attribution Theory to my A level PE class.
Pre-learning task
As a pre-learning task, for homework I asked my students to watch this YouTube video about Attribution Theory. I embed the video into a OneNote page and set the task as an Assignment in Teams.
Prior to the following lesson, I copied the URL from the YouTube video and pasted it into Diffit, asking it firstly to summarise the video and then to create a list of key terminology. This is what it produced:
In preparation for the start of the next lesson, I pasted this key terminology into ChatGPT, asked it to turn the list into a table and pasted the table into OneNote. I then distributed the page to my students.
The opening task of the next lesson was for my students to read and familiarise themselves with these key concepts.
After a couple of minutes, we carried out a turn and talk activity in which students asked and answered questions in pairs about what the key terms meant.
Matching Task
From there, students carried out a matching task to confirm their understanding of the concepts. With succinct prompt instructions from me, ChatGPT created this matching task which I had previously pasted into OneNote.
These two tasks proved to be extremely useful as they provided the students with the necessary information (key terminology), time and familiarity before moving forward to tackle the actual attribution theory.
Next followed direct instruction from me about the attribution theory, using the specific target language (key terminology) that the students had previously met.
This powerpoint slide was flat printed into OneNote for students to make their own notes.
Students took notes and then articulated their understanding to their partners.
Multiple Choice Questions
Next, the wonders of AI allowed me to distribute a set of multiple choice questions created by Diffit.
Students completed these questions on their own initially, then compared their responses in pairs, before a whole class discussion ensued and the answers were checked.
This was the first of a couple of lessons on attribution theory.
Reflection
The time taken to create the learning resources was minimal with the use of AI and the ‘hard thinking’ and student engagement with the tasks was high.
Whilst I am not advocating the use of AI all the time, there are clearly occasions in which its use can be beneficial.
If you would like to know more about using Diffit, these videos may be helpful.
