You’re a Reading Teacher, Too!

TL;DR: Teaching Reading Through Content Instruction with AI Support

Students who struggle with reading often struggle to access content in subjects such as science, social studies, and history. Rather than separating reading instruction from content instruction, teachers can integrate both together using AI-supported planning.

Key Idea

  • Teach reading skills while teaching academic content
  • Use existing classroom materials as reading instruction tools
  • Support comprehension, vocabulary, and critical thinking within content lessons

How AI Supports the Process

  • Generate instructional activity ideas
  • Create teacher-led and student-centered activities
  • Suggest supports for reading challenges
  • Develop standards-aligned lesson plans

Recommended Workflow

  1. Provide AI with classroom context, standards, materials, and student needs
  2. Request instructional activity options rather than full lessons first
  3. Select appropriate activities using professional judgment
  4. Ask AI to build lesson plans using selected activities
  5. Review, revise, and refine the lesson plans before classroom use

Important Principle

AI supports instructional planning, but teachers remain the decision-makers. Educators review all activities, lesson structures, pacing, and differentiation to ensure alignment with student needs and instructional goals.

Prompts in This Video

PROMPT 1 (set-up and exploration)

Context:
I teach 7th grade social studies. I am conducting a lesson based on this standard: “7.76. Identify causes and consequences of US government policies that impacted the territory of New Mexico.”
As part of our studies, we are reading chapter 1 of “Bless Me Ultima”

Challenges:
Some students are having a hard time with understanding the content of the chapter.
Some students are ELL
Some students have low vocabulary and challenges with language register, particularly with the dialogue and idiomatic expressions in the text.

Need / task:
Provide the following:
— 5 research-based instructional activities (i.e., teacher-led activities) that can provide instructional support for students with difficulties
— 5 research-based student learning activities (i.e., student independent or group activities) that can provide instructional support for students with difficulties

Task constraints:
The activities should incorporate reading skill development aligned with a structured reading approach to vocabulary and comprehension development.

At least one instructional activity and one student activity should include opportunities to explore the content using all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

PROMPT 2 (lesson plan)

Basic Task:
Now I need 2 45-minute lesson plans that incorporate the book chapter with the content standard. It should have individual and group activities for exploring the content as related to the standard.

Provide detailed lesson plans in a format suitable for submitting for administrator review, with sufficient instructions for me to conduct each part of the lessons.

Assessment:
– Each lesson end with a formative assessment.
– Lesson two should begin with a review of the lesson one assessment.

Specific activities to include:
Along with other learning activities, make sure to include the following:
– Teacher activities: Structured Close Reading with Vocabulary Frontloading, Concept and Context Mini-Lesson Connecting Literature to New Mexico History
– Student activities: Collaborative Story Mapping Activity, Bloom’s Taxonomy Literature Exploration Project

Pedagogical approach:
– Cooperative and inquiry-based, based on the types of activities.

Differentiation:
– Include activity modification recommendations for students with the challenges described previously.

PROMPT 3 (lesson modifications)

I need the following modifications to the lessons.

Lesson one:
– The Collaborative Story Mapping Activity needs a whole-class wrap-up, and perhaps 5 more minutes for the activity
– The objective “Collaborate with peers to organize and discuss story events.” is a process, an activity, rather than a learning outcome. Remove / revise it.
– Review the other objectives in both lessons, as well, to make sure they represent learning outcomes and not process.

Lesson two:
– I need more instruction for conducting the Bloom’s Taxonomy activity

Task: Please revise the lesson plans with these modifications.

Needed follow-up (unique to this case)

Not exactly what I need. Actually re-create / revise the lessons completely, rather than stating “no major revisions”!