Using AI to Create Thematic Kindergarten Lessons

Let’s talk kindergarten instruction and, specifically, let’s talk about creating a week-long thematic unit that is interesting to the students: engaging, interactive, lots and lots of fun, but at the same time incorporating essential skills and learning for the students because we want it to be fun.

They’re five years old, but we also needed to be meaningful from an academic standpoint. So that is what we’re going to do in this technique here.

Step 1: Thematic Plan

It’s going to start with the actual plan. What are we going to do during the week? So what we’re going to ask for is a one-week kindergarten lesson plan centered around the theme. And here I chose rain forest animals. You can put in whatever would be of interest to your students.

Then what does it look like? 20 minutes per day. And we want it to have objectives each day, books to read, hands-on activities, and a little simple assessment we can do on Friday to see if they’ve actually picked up new skills and made progress towards meeting the content standards.

Then, what kinds of academic content do we want? Phonemic awareness, letter recognition, and math. And then, of course, tell me what content standards this seems to be addressing.

Prompt
Create a 1-week kindergarten lesson plan centered around the theme “Rain forest
Animals.” The lesson should be 20-minutes per day. Include daily objectives, books to read, hands-on activities, and a simple assessment idea for Friday. Each day, include a phonemic awareness activity, a letter recognition activity, and a math activity. Indicate most likely content standards for each lesson or activity.

So this is our starting point here, and let’s see what our AI can give to us here. Let me drop that in and say “Go”.

Here is a one-week kindergarten plan centered on the theme: 20 minutes, all the things that we asked for basically. And what does it look like?

Okay, there’s the introduction. Day one, meet the rain forest. We’ve got a book. We’ve got phonemic awareness activities. Oh, and happily, it actually has Jaguar as three syllables. So, that’s cool.

Letter recognition, counting, hands on, and standards that are being addressed in this.

One thing I will note, we didn’t ask for it specifically. We asked for phonemic awareness, letter recognition, and mathematics, but it also included potential science content standards that are also being addressed here.

So this pattern then goes on through the day, each day’s sub theme. We got rain forest birds, rain forest mammals, amphibians, and reptiles. The boys will love that, I’m quite sure. And review and celebration.

So, we’ve got our daily plan around this thematic unit. Now, what else do we need as the teacher?

Step 2: Transition – Song

Well, let’s take a look at prompt number two. Prompt two is asking for a song. Each day when we start this theme to get kids sort of transitioned from what they were doing into this thematic plan, let’s sing a little song because every kid in kindergarten is a great singer. So, write a little song about the rain forest that we can sing at the beginning, and put the song to the melody of Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

Prompt

Write a little song about the rain forest that we can sing at the beginning of each day. Put the song to the melody of “row row row your boat”.

Now, I’ll drop this in, and let’s see if we can get a little song. Rain, rain, forest, green and full of trees, monkeys swing and parrots sing, buzzing bees and breeze, and so on and so forth. If you’re thinking I’m going to sing it right now, you’re out of luck. You’re on your own.

But this is actually pretty cool because now we have a little song and I’m assuming that we all know the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Okay, so that’s number two.

Step 3: Assessment

Number three, thinking about what we need as the teachers, I need something that says “Are the students actually getting the content?” We have content standards. I need to observe the students, and I have my little assessment at the end. Are the kids making progress towards the standards or not? Can they demonstrate these skills?

For that I need a little checklist, basically for each student. So let’s turn that over to AI and say “Go.”

Prompt

Create a chart for indicating whether or not a student demonstrated the content standard. The top should have the student’s name and the date. Then in two-column format, list the standards and a place to add a check mark indicating successful demonstration.

Two columns, we have students’ names, date, etc. There are the standards over there and a place for us to check off if they were able to demonstrate that particular skill or make progress to it.

And so there’s my little tool, which I will use and probably put it in the students’ folder or in some other place I need.

Would you like it exported to Word or PDF? Likely I would, but for the sake of the example here, we’ll go ahead and skip that.

So, that is prompts 1, 2, and 3, and there’s two more to go.

Step 4: Materials Planning

Now, prompt four, thinking about our own needs. If I’m looking ahead and trying to plan out what I need to do, I need to know what materials are going to be necessary for all these different hands-on activities. So, I need my shopping list.

Basically, I’ve got my recipe. Now, I need my shopping list. I need my materials. So, what materials do I actually need?

Prompt

Provide a materials list for the hands-on activities above.

Well, according to AI, here’s the list of materials as I’m prepping and planning for the instruction when I do this. Each activity, a little summary of the activity, and recommendations for the materials that would be used by the students, including child-safe scissors, tape for hanging them on the wall. So, this is actually quite comprehensive for me as the teacher.

Step 5: Letter to Parents

Now, having done this, there is really just one thing left to do. We’ve had a lot of fun. We’ve done a lot of activities. We dug into sounds and counting and numbers and all these sorts of things. Spent a lot of time on it. There’s a pretty good chance that the kids will be talking about this with their parents.

So, I think the last thing that we need here is something that we can send home on Friday to tell the parents, hey, here’s all the really interesting things that we did during the week. Here are the things that the kids learn to do, and here are some things that you parents can do to help reinforce and extend this learning. So, some suggestions that students can parents can take to help practice the target letters and the math skills.

I need a letter, which, to no surprise, I’m going to turn over to AI: a Friday take-home letter weekly update. Dear families, here’s what we did. And here’s how you can help at home over the weekend and have a wonderful weekend. Sincerely, hugs and kisses, your kindergarten teacher.

Prompt

At the end of Friday, I want to send a letter home with the children to keep their parents informed about what we did during the week. Also suggest ways that they can help students practice the target letters and math skills.

So, there you go. That is using AI to help us develop thematic lessons that are meaningful with substantial and necessary content for kindergarten students.

Conclusion

If this is of use to you, one thing you might want to do for share with your colleagues, obviously, but also think about what those student interests are. You can also include very specific content standards in that initial prompt. Say, make sure it includes these particular content standards or these particular skills, so that when you create that initial plan and all of the follow-up pieces, it’s always referencing back to those target areas that you want kids to learn.

I hope that you found this useful. I hope this is a technique that you will try out, and I hope that you will explore the many ways that AI can help you make kindergarten teaching easier and more fun.