From my many years of experience in leading educators and leaders through the curriculum-design process, “timeless essentials” are what I have come to refer to as the necessary components that make up quality units of study.

Where’s The Time?

Educators today are more pressed for time than ever before. Educators and leaders certainly understand the value, benefit, and importance of creating or updating their curricular units of study to improve instruction and student learning. But with so many professional tasks, concerns, and responsibilities to deal with every single day, they will understandably think or say, “I’d love to be able to do this myself or with colleagues, but where’s the time to do so? I’m already feeling stretched to the limit.”

How to Make Unit-Design Doable?

Being mindful of these real challenges, I considered how to make the unit-design process as doable as possible. I began researching Artificial Intelligence platforms and apps to see if A.I. tools could help busy educators expedite the creation of each of these essential elements. After several experimental tries, followed by my careful evaluation of the A.I.-generated responses, I realized that they most certainly can.

Throughout all three volumes of my new book series, Integrating Teaching and Learning: “Timeless Essentials” for Creating Integrated Units of Study,” I have included numerous A.I.-generated examples paired with educator-created examples for the elements in focus. My sole purpose for incorporating the use of A.I. into this unit-design process is to help continually-on-the-go educators to easily learn and use the process.

A.I.-Generated Examples to Accompany Educator-Created Examples

A.I. is indeed a tremendous resource for finding needed information. However, the reliability of this information must be carefully determined by individuals since its information has not been formally “vetted” (verified for accuracy and authenticity). This is why, in chapters with A.I.-generated examples, I present the what, why, and how of each “timeless essential”, along with educator-created examples, before presenting the A.I.-generated examples. This enables educators to learn and apply the criteria or attributes for correctly written elements first so they can then determine for themselves the value of every A.I.- generated response. The A.I.-generated content is formatted and worded somewhat differently from that which an educator creates, but it is consistently proving to provide a very close match to examples created by educators.

A.I.-generated examples accompany educator-created ones for the following “timeless essentials” in the three-volume book series:

Volume One:

· Student Learning Targets

· Success Criteria Matched to Student Learning Targets

· Big Ideas (Student Responses to the Educator’s Essential Questions)

Volume Two:

· Essential Questions (Engaging, Open-Ended Questions to Spark Student Interest)

· Creating a Quality End-of-Unit Assessment in Multiple Formats:

o Multiple-Choice Questions with Distractor Analyses

o Short-Constructed Response Questions

o Extended-Response Questions

Volume Three:

· Learning Progressions—the “Building Blocks” of Daily Instruction

· Quick Progress Checks Aligned to Learning Progressions

· A.I. Guidance for Providing “Corrective Instruction”

· A.I.-Generated Standards-Aligned Learning Tasks

Explore my website at www.larryainsworth.com to read more about the series and see the complete list of “timeless essentials” workshops!

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As well be sure to contact us at larry@larryainsworth.com anytime!