Lesson 4.2: Using AI to Create Writing Assignments — Teaching Writing in the Age of AI

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Lesson Text+

Concept Explanation

A lesson plan is best when it fits the students effectively. In the past, teachers had to write their own lesson plans tailored to their specific classroom scenarios, or acquire them from a textbook and then adapt them to their class. Both of these methods could be very time-consuming. Now, with artificial intelligence, the process of creating lesson plans and customizing them for a specific class is significantly sped up.

AI shines in quickly dealing with tons of information and finding patterns. When applied in education, this becomes a game-changer, allowing for a more tailored, dynamic, and innovative approach to writing assignments. Let’s start with the most basic concept: Using an AI chatbot to help generate writing ideas on a topic you specify.

At its core, AI is programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. In the context of education, this means it can help generate engaging and effective assignments and organizational schemes for classroom use. Traditionally, devising creative and effective writing prompts has been a time-consuming endeavor for educators. Teachers often spend hours brainstorming ideas, researching relevant topics, and trying to tailor assignments to meet diverse student needs, align with standards, and show mastery of learning objectives.

This is where AI can be a game-changer. AI tools, particularly large language models, excel at processing information and identifying patterns, making them incredibly efficient at generating a wide array of writing ideas. By providing an AI with details about student interests, learning styles, or specific thematic areas, teachers can quickly receive a plethora of tailored prompts. This can provide a much-needed spark. AI can help break through creative blocks, providing a solid foundation from which teachers can further refine and personalize assignments.

Integrating AI into the process of creating writing assignments empowers teachers to work smarter, making the most of their time. Effort can then be redirected towards more personalized student interaction, feedback, and lesson differentiation. Educators can harness AI’s power to work toward every student having the opportunity to connect with an assignment, making, ultimately, for a more profound and enjoyable writing experience.

Application

The ideas below suggest a number of different ways in which teachers can employ AI as an assistant to help create content for classroom instruction.

Speeding up assignment planning: AI drastically cuts down the time needed for teachers to craft diverse, relevant, and engaging writing assignments. Instead of starting from scratch, educators have a plethora of AI-suggested prompts and angles to choose from.

Personalized Prompt Generation: Provide an AI with general details about your students (e.g., their interests, learning styles, current skill level) and the specific learning situation (e.g., a particular story, skill, or broader topic). The AI can then generate prompts tailored to their unique needs and the context of the lesson, ensuring relevance.
- Sample Prompt: Have AI generate prompts related to a specific work of literature: “Create writing prompts for a student interested in law, who struggles with showing instead of telling, and is currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird. The prompts should encourage them to explore the theme of justice.”
-  Have AI generate prompts related to a specific grammatical topic (e.g., subject-verb agreement): “Create writing prompts for a visual learner who enjoys creative storytelling and needs practice with subject-verb agreement.”
Trending Topics in Lesson Planning: AI tools can scan current global trends or events, allowing teachers to craft assignments that are not just academically relevant but socially pertinent. For example, during a global summit on climate change, an AI tool might suggest assignments exploring why decisions are controversial.
Topic Expansion with Chatbots: Provide an AI chatbot, such as ChatGPT, with a simple topic like “Renaissance,” then ask for different types of writing prompts. The AI can give you numerous suggestions at the click of a mouse button. Examples:
- Ask for prompts that include historical analysis: Discuss the economic drivers behind the Renaissance. Analyze the social and political factors that contributed to the flourishing of art and science during the Italian Renaissance. Compare and contrast the Northern Renaissance with the Italian Renaissance.
-  Ask for prompts that include a personal connection: If you could transport yourself to any moment in the Renaissance, what would it be and why? Describe what you would hope to learn or experience that resonates with your own interests or aspirations. How does the spirit of the Renaissance echo in today's digital age?
-  Ask for prompts that require creative exploration: Narrate a day in the life of Leonardo da Vinci. Write a short story from the perspective of a common person living in a Renaissance city, depicting a typical day and their interactions with the changing world around them. Imagine you are an artist during a modern “renaissance” in technology and innovation. Create a fictional artwork that embodies the spirit of this new era, and describe its meaning and impact.
Interactive Storytelling: AI platforms like Plotagon allow for real-time narrative creation. Students can set a scene, and the AI creates video. It can even suggest possible plot events. Such assignments encourage creativity while actively engaging students in real-time writing decision-making.

Crafting Rubrics and Streamlining Peer Reviews with AI: AI can assist in ensuring that assessments are consistent, detailed, and focused on key learning outcomes, making the review process more about learning than just assessment. AI’s speed and quick understanding of patterns can reshape how educators design rubrics and peer review processes, ensuring they're comprehensive, objective, and tailored to specific learning outcomes.

Dynamic Rubric Creation: Generate comprehensive rubrics tailored to specific assignments. By inputting assignment requirements, standards, and/or learning objectives, the AI can produce a rubric with detailed leveled grading comments for various performance levels. This streamlines the rubric creation process and also ensures consistency and clarity in evaluating student work.
- Sample Prompt: “Craft a detailed rubric for an essay analyzing this topic: ___________. Ensure the rubric includes this standard: _______. Include other aspects of writing, such as organization, ideas, and voice, with clear performance descriptors for each level.”
Using Exemplars: Teachers can input previous top-performing essays into an AI tool, and then ask it to identify common elements of these essays, helping in the creation of a more effective focus for grading future essays. It could even generate additional examples based on previous writing.
- Sample Prompt: (paste in previous essays) “Analyze the provided top-performing essays and identify common elements in their structure, argument development, and use of evidence. Based on this analysis, generate a clear and concise focus for grading future essays on this topic.”
AI-Enhanced Peer Review: Using AI tools, teachers can craft peer review forms that prompt students to provide feedback on specific elements the AI identifies as crucial for a given assignment. For example, if the assignment is a persuasive essay, the AI-generated form might emphasize evaluating the strength of arguments, use of evidence, and rhetorical techniques.
- Sample Prompt: “Create a peer review form for a _____ essay. The form should guide students to evaluate the strength of the thesis, the use of evidence, and rhetorical techniques.”
Feedback Augmentation: For grammar-focused assignments, AI can auto-detect errors and prompt peer reviewers to discuss them, ensuring that peer reviews are both constructive and educational.
- Sample Prompt: “Review the following student essay for grammatical errors. For each error, provide a brief (1-sentence) explanation of why it is incorrect and suggest a correction.”

AI in Crafting Writing Exercises and Offering Varied Assignment Options: Essays are not the only form of writing. The writing process encompasses a spectrum of skills, from grammar and syntax to argumentation and creativity. AI can be harnessed to design exercises targeting specific areas of development. AI’s strength lies in its adaptability, allowing educators to craft exercises and assignments that are tailored to student needs, preferences, and areas for growth.

Targeting Specific Weak Areas: AI tools can generate exercises tailored to specific student challenges. For instance, if a class struggles with passive voice, the AI can create exercises converting passive sentences to active ones.
- Sample Prompt: “Generate five sentences that contain logical fallacies. Then, create an answer key showing how each could be improved.”
Feedback Mechanisms: Post-exercise, AI can provide instant feedback. If a student consistently confuses “its” and “it's”, the AI can correct them, and then provide a mini-lesson explaining the difference.
- Sample Prompt: “Generate an exercise for students who confuse ‘there,’ ‘their,’ and ‘they're.’ Include five fill-in-the-blank sentences where students choose the correct word. Provide an answer key.”
Diverse Writing Assignments: One size doesn't fit all. Using AI, teachers can craft a variety of writing assignments catering to diverse student interests and strengths. For instance, for a topic like “Space Exploration”, AI might suggest a research paper on Mars exploration, a narrative essay imagining a day on Pluto, and a persuasive piece debating the ethics of colonizing other planets.
- Sample Prompt: Generate three diverse writing assignments for a high school English class on the topic of ‘_______.’ Include a research paper, a narrative piece, and a persuasive essay.”

Analysis

AI can be seen somewhat similarly to water: It takes the shape of its container. When used in the educational arena, it can mold itself to fit pedagogical needs, aiming to enhance rather than replace the human touch.

AI’s ability to personalize prompts, craft rubrics, and even generate exercises presents a powerful tool for educators. However, this power comes with inherent ethical considerations that warrant closer examination. One of these concerns relates to algorithmic bias, the idea that an AI trained on data that reflects existing societal biases might inadvertently generate text that reinforces stereotypes. For instance, if an AI is asked to generate prompts for a student interested in law, and its training data predominantly links law with specific gender or racial profiles, it might unintentionally narrow the types of legal issues or historical figures it suggests, thereby limiting a student’s exposure to the full breadth of the field.

A related issue with using AI in these manners is that its tendency to reproduce the most likely text can result in an output that is overly specific in a particular way. Relying too heavily on AI to identify “common elements” in top-performing essays could inadvertently stifle originality and encourage a formulaic approach to writing. The human element of understanding context, intent, and the unique voice of a student's work is difficult for AI to fully replicate.

Finally, while AI-enhanced feedback mechanisms offer efficiency, the ethical implications surrounding student data privacy and the potential for over-reliance on AI for learning need to be considered. AI-provided “mini-lessons” based on student errors raise questions about the transparency of these AI-driven learning paths and whether students fully understand the source of their feedback. There's a fine line between providing support and inadvertently reducing critical thinking skills by offering instant, perhaps less deeply processed, corrections. The “container” that AI takes shape in must be carefully designed to prioritize equity, human agency, and the holistic development of students, not just efficiency and pattern recognition.

Learn More

Recommended Resources

Tool: Generate Story, a narrowly focused AI tool that provides writing prompt ideas with several modifiable settings.
University of Kansas Center for Teaching Excellence. (July 2024). “Using AI Ethically in Writing Assignments.”
Yi, F., Taggart, J., & Mickel, B. “Teaching with AI in Higher Education, Development Version.” University of Virginia Library.

Reflective Questions

How can AI help you spend more time on personalized guidance and building students' social skills?
What can teachers do to make sure AI tools are fair and show different viewpoints, instead of accidentally promoting biases?
How can teachers help students think critically and check information when AI is creating more and more content and feedback?