Best Practices for Using AI in Your Planning Period

As an educator, you juggle countless daily tasks—lesson planning, grading, creating learning materials, meetings, and hall duties, to name a few. With so many demands, finding time to focus on what matters most—tutoring, feedback, mentoring, and positively engaging with students—can be a challenge. That’s where AI can make a difference. Tools like Eduaide.ai are designed to simplify your workload, make diverse teaching strategies accessible, and empower you to be creative and experiment without the associated burden of limited time. But regardless of the specific AI tools you choose to incorporate into your routine, there are best practices we can all learn from and limitations we should strive to understand.

1. Start with a Focused Approach

Introducing AI into your workflow doesn’t have to be overwhelming, nor does it have to be binary. Start by evaluating exactly what you want to do or what problem you want to solve. From there, you can focus AI on one specific area of your goal—maybe a task that takes up a significant portion of your time—such as lesson planning. Eduaide.Ai can help you generate well-structured, dynamic lesson plans tailored to your teaching style in just a few clicks. Or, if you want more depth and control, you can dive into the editor or use our suite of personalization tools. This allows you to experiment with AI’s potential while still maintaining full control over your classroom strategy.

Best Practice Tip: Consider AI-generated lesson plans as a foundation and refine them to fit your unique classroom needs. Initially, you may only use a single piece of the AI’s recommended plan, but with small steps, you build familiarity and confidence, which are determining factors in successful technology use.

Where to Start? Eduaide.Ai’s “Lesson Seed” always includes prior knowledge measures. You can take those measures and create a short warm-up to engage students' interest and activate relevant prior knowledge.

2. Use AI to Differentiate Instruction

One of the greatest strengths of AI in education is the ability of teachers to use it to quickly respond to changing contexts and needs. AI tools can help you create varied instructional materials to meet the diverse needs of your students. For example, you can create versions of a text but with different targeted keyword glossaries, question choices or types, or even differing text levels. Once you’ve honed in on your lesson’s approach and goals, you can quickly augment instruction and change the pace and path of instruction without sacrificing the expectation of rigor regardless of starting level.

Where to Start? Eduaide.Ai allows you to design lesson plans and learning resources tailored to your student’s individual progress. See the Transform options on the resource card to get started.

Optimum Outcome: With AI's support, you can create a more inclusive and engaging classroom where each student receives the targeted instruction they need to succeed. Differentiation and responsive instruction based on the student’s prior knowledge and ability are potent tools for putting students in the Zone of Proximal Development.

3. Automate Routine Tasks for Greater Efficiency

Many day-to-day tasks, such as grading, worksheet creation, and classroom material management, can be automated with AI, allowing you to focus on the more impactful aspects of teaching. Eduaide.ai can take care of generating worksheets, providing actionable feedback on assignments, and organizing resources, reducing the time you spend on process tasks to redirect your attention to opportunities for professional learning, experimentation, and meaningful student engagement (mentoring, tutoring, check-ins, and behavior interventions).

Best Practice Tip: Automate administrative tasks like grading and material creation with AI to reclaim valuable teaching time. This allows you to prioritize building relationships with your students and fine-tuning the materials to enhance their learning experience.

4. Leverage AI for Immediate Feedback

Feedback is critical to student growth, but providing timely, actionable, and consistent feedback can be challenging. AI tools can help by offering instant feedback on student assignments, which can be reviewed and supplemented with your insights. You can ask an AI to focus on specific aspects of student writing or to follow provided rubrics. Regardless, AI-generated feedback can help students quickly identify areas of improvement and adjust their work.

Optimum Outcome: Students benefit from quicker feedback cycles, helping them stay engaged and motivated to improve. This timely support targets both comprehension and retention, allowing for better long-term outcomes.

5. Incorporate AI for Creative Teaching Solutions

AI can be an excellent resource for brainstorming new teaching approaches or lesson ideas. If you're looking to diversify your teaching strategies or freshen up a lesson plan, AI tools like Eduaide.ai can generate multiple ideas and activities in a matter of seconds, offering creative insights you might not have considered.

Best Practice Tip: Use AI as a creativity partner, then blend its ideas with your expertise to craft lessons that are both innovative and aligned with your students’ learning needs. For example, import an existing worksheet or material you use and ask the AI how you may approach the same objective through a more collaborative or fully guided lesson.

6. Maintain the Human Connection

While AI is a powerful tool, it’s of utmost importance to maintain the essential human element in teaching. AI can handle the mechanics of lesson planning and grading, but the relationships, empathy, and intuition you bring to the classroom are irreplaceable. This is the great divide of responsibility—Generative AI can do form exceptionally well, but it is up to you to convey meaning. The best outcomes occur when AI complements your expertise, helping you spend more time on what truly matters—connecting with your students and making meaning apparent.

Best Practice Tip: Use AI to handle time-consuming administrative tasks, but always apply your personal judgment to ensure that teaching strategies and feedback reflect your individual classroom culture and goals. And this is an approach that is familiar to all teachers—take what’s effective, leave the rest.

A Balanced Approach to AI Integration

Integrating AI into your teacher workflow can help you streamline administrative tasks, personalize learning experiences, and provide more timely feedback—all of which contribute to a more effective and engaging classroom environment. By starting small, leveraging AI for creativity, and maintaining a balance between technology and human insight, you can unlock the full potential of AI while ensuring that your teaching remains student-focused and impactful.

Platforms like Eduaide.ai are designed to support, not replace, your critical role in the classroom. When used thoughtfully, AI can be a transformative tool that enhances both your teaching effectiveness and your students’ success.