I'm back in an ELA classroom part-time at ASP for G6 and G7. I'm loving being with students everyday in the role of teacher, rather than principal. I enjoy the challenges and struggles of administration, but being in the classroom is always more fun. Our current textbook for ELA is from HMH and it is a good book, but sometimes I feel like not doing certain work online. Grammar is something I feel works better offline for me. Giving students time to practice reading examples of sentences and then creating their own examples without the distractions of the online world can be a good break from digital life. The grammar lesson for this particular unit is dealing with Simple, Compound, and Complex sentences. The HMH lesson was good, but I thought — let's see how Bard handles the idea.
I typed in the following prompt: Explanation for 7th grade students about simple sentences with 10 examples of simple sentences. The results were this lesson about Simply Sentences. I was pretty happy with the results and the style, so I used the prompt two more times, but changed it to Compound Sentences and Complex Sentences. I'll be teaching these lessons next week, so I will return to provide my experience with the students.
Update 12.19.23
I used the lessons with both of my middle school classes and it went quite well. Students asked many questions about how I used AI to create the lessons. It lead to natural discussions about ethical use of AI technology. We wrote our practice sentences together in class. We will be working on Argumentative Essays after the holiday, so they will be expected to use Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences correctly in the essay.
