Improving Classroom Processes with AI
TL;DR: Using AI to Improve Classroom Processes
(Instructional Guidance, Transcript, and Prompts below)
Overview
This video explains how teachers can use AI to strengthen classroom processes, reduce disruptions, and create smoother routines. The focus is on helping teachers design efficient procedures that match the physical layout of their classrooms.
The Foundation of Classroom Management
Instructional Planning
Effective classroom management grows primarily from a strong instructional plan. When students are actively engaged with meaningful work, the class is naturally easier to manage.
Clear Expectations
Behavior expectations must be clearly defined and consistently supported. Structured expectations reduce confusion and create a stable learning environment.
Efficient Processes
Smooth routines for everyday tasks, such as turning in work or distributing materials, remove unnecessary friction. The video focuses on using AI to design these processes effectively.
Customizing Classroom Processes with AI
Using a Classroom Diagram
The video demonstrates how providing a simple classroom map helps AI understand the physical context for routines. AI uses this context to generate realistic and personalized process options.
Generating and Evaluating Options
Teachers can ask AI for several possible procedures for tasks like collecting homework, distributing materials, or organizing student movement. AI evaluates each option by weighing pros and cons, then identifies the most efficient process along with a secondary choice.
Examples of Classroom Processes Improved With AI
Homework Submission
AI can propose different ways students might turn in homework based on the room layout. It compares options and selects the ones that minimize disruption and error. The teacher can then choose the best fit based on professional judgment.
Material Distribution
For classes that require distributing materials multiple times, AI can design step-by-step routines that reduce movement, keep traffic predictable, and maintain instructional flow.
Classroom Entry and Exit
Because transitions often cause the most disruption, AI can help generate strategies for orderly and efficient student movement when entering or leaving the room.
Quick Formative Assessments
AI provides options for fast, low-disruption, in-class formative checks. Examples include table-group responses, simple card-based systems, or no-tech cooperative alternatives. These allow teachers to quickly gauge student understanding and adjust instruction.
Final Takeaway
AI can help teachers design personalized, efficient classroom processes that align with both the physical layout and the instructional goals of the class. These AI-supported routines strengthen classroom management and improve the overall learning experience.
Teacher Take-aways
Pedagogical and Instructional Implications
Effective classroom management is rooted in three interconnected elements: strong instructional design, explicit expectations, and well-structured routines. Research consistently shows that high-quality instruction reduces misbehavior by maintaining student engagement and providing clear academic purpose (Emmer & Sabornie, 2015; Marzano, 2009). When students understand what they are learning and are actively involved in worthwhile tasks, the classroom environment becomes inherently easier to manage.
Clear and consistently reinforced behavior expectations form the second pillar. Students benefit from knowing precisely what successful participation looks like during different modes of learning. Expectations should be explicitly taught, modeled, and revisited, particularly during transitions or new instructional formats. Consistency enhances predictability, which supports both emotional security and responsible behavior.
The third component is the intentional design of routines and processes. Everyday actions such as entering the room, submitting work, gathering materials, or shifting between activities are common points where confusion or loss of focus can occur. Well-designed routines minimize unnecessary movement, reduce opportunities for error, and return instructional time to the teacher. Effective routines also align with the physical layout of the room, accounting for traffic patterns, storage locations, and the teacher’s workflow.
Transitions, especially entry and exit, require particular attention. These moments often carry higher emotional energy and can escalate quickly without structure. Predictable, practiced procedures—such as staged dismissal or designated pathways—maintain order and prevent bottlenecks.
Finally, frequent, brief formative assessments serve dual purposes. They provide real-time insight into student understanding while also functioning as a management tool: students remain focused because they expect regular opportunities to demonstrate their thinking. Cooperative structures, such as table-level consensus responses, help maintain engagement and channel student interaction productively.
Together, these strategies illustrate that classroom management is not primarily reactive. It is a proactive system built through purposeful planning, clear communication, and smooth routines that keep attention on learning while preventing most disruptions before they begin.
Emmer, E. T., & Sabornie, E. J. (2015). Handbook of classroom management (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Marzano, R. J. (2009). Classroom management that works: Research-based strategies for every teacher. ASCD.
AI Support and Use
Teachers can use AI as a practical planning partner to refine the instructional, behavioral, and procedural components of classroom management. AI does not replace professional judgment; instead, it accelerates decision making, helps anticipate problems, and supports the design of efficient systems that reduce disruption and improve learning flow.
A strong instructional plan remains the foundation of management, and AI can support this by helping teachers analyze lesson structure, pacing, and engagement demands. By describing the type of activity, expected student movement, and learning goals, teachers can use AI to identify where transitions might be difficult, where additional scaffolds may be needed, or which instructional patterns naturally reduce off-task behavior.
Clear expectations become easier to implement when they are aligned with predictable routines. AI can assist teachers by helping them articulate expectations for different learning formats and check for consistency across situations. When expectations are written clearly, AI can help refine language so that students receive straightforward, developmentally appropriate guidance.
AI is especially useful in designing classroom processes. Teachers can describe the physical layout of the room and the recurring tasks that occur throughout a lesson. AI can then help map out multiple procedural options, compare their efficiency, and identify which options minimize confusion, reduce student movement, and limit opportunities for error. Examples of areas where AI can support routine development include:
- Submitting homework or classwork
- Distributing and collecting materials at various points in a lesson
- Structuring entry and exit procedures
- Managing transitions between small-group, whole-group, and independent work
This type of support is particularly effective when teachers must refine processes to match unique room configurations, unusual traffic patterns, or extended instructional blocks.
AI also contributes to more effective formative assessment routines. Teachers can outline the types of quick checks they want to use, and AI can help propose low-disruption methods that support ongoing engagement. Cooperative structures such as table-level responses or consensus cards can be strengthened by having AI compare the relative efficiency of different options and recommend the versions that best preserve instructional flow.
By analyzing choices, summarizing trade-offs, and identifying the highest-efficiency routines, AI helps teachers build management systems that are proactive rather than reactive. The result is a classroom where processes move smoothly, expectations are clear, and the majority of teacher attention can remain on instruction rather than correction.
Full Transcript and Prompts
The Foundations of Classroom Management
What are the keys to good classroom management?
- Well, first and foremost, it’s your instructional plan. What are the kids doing to engage in the content? You have no more powerful tool than that.
- But then, of course, you also have your behavior expectations that are clearly defined, consistently applied with appropriate supports and interventions as needed.
- But the third is just your processes. How do kids do things? How do you get things done during the class time?
And for that, we can turn to AI for some help. Plus something very, very neat that I will show you.
Customizing Classroom Processes with AI
So, the first thing that I did, and the first thing that you will do, is draw a picture, a picture of your classroom with all the parts labeled. Give the AI an idea of “here’s the environment in which these processes take place” because in many cases the way you do something depends on what the environment looks like and where the kids are.
PROMPT
This image shows my classroom layout. The main student entrance is at the back of the room. Please describe my classroom based on this image.
So I took a I drew a very rough picture of a classroom. I scanned it in, and now I’m going to give it to the AI to use as we look at processes. Let me grab that and drop it in there.
And then I’m just going to check for understanding to make sure the AI actually understands what it’s looking at and to make sure that I have described it accurately. Here’s my classroom and just a little note.
Make sure that’s correct and describes my classroom based on this picture that I just gave you.
All right. So, a check for understanding. And it’s going to take a moment.
And what I’m going to do is I’m going to read the description and make sure that it’s accurate. If I need to, I can clarify some things like, “Hey, there’s two doors, but the kids actually use that one” or whatever I need to add to it. In this case, pretty good.
Now, once the AI understands the environment, we can start looking at processes.
Examples of Classroom Processes Improved with AI
Homework Submission (Prompt Model)
PROMPT
Consider several processes for student to submit their homework assignments with this layout. Reflect on the pros and cons of each. Compare them against each other to determine the single most efficient process that reduces potential for error or classroom disruption. Provide a second choice.
And this is the template right here. And they’re all going to, for the most part, they’re all going to look like this.
What we’re going to do is we’re going to ask for some options, some several processes. And here’s the part that you would change for your specific needs. Here we’re using students submitting homework because that happens in pretty much every classroom.
And then what do we want the AI to do? Reflect on the pros and cons. Compare them against each other.
And ultimately what we want the AI to do is to deter to determine the single most efficient process with some parameters. We want them to reduce the potential for error and reduce the possibility of classroom disruption so the kids can continue with their learning process just in case the main option does not work.
Give me a second choice as well.
All right, let’s feed this into the AI (as soon as I can find it…right there). Go.
It’s going to think for a bit because it’s got a lot to think about. It’s got to identify some options based on that layout, right? And then it’s got to give me pros of each one and cons of each one. Then it has to weigh them against each other and finally come up with option selection one and two and tell me why.
So there’s a lot going on in the background there. But the nice thing is all of this is specific to your environment.
A lot of the stuff we see on processes and classroom management assumes that everybody’s classroom looks the same, which is not the case. So here we make sure it’s appropriate for you.
And here’s a bunch of different ways to do it. Now we’re going to compare them: Lowest movement and disruption that highest teacher control, etc. So it’s weighing the value of each of these.
And finally, here is the most efficient process aligns with natural student flow reduces unnecessary. So that’s the kids turning stuff in when they walk into the classroom.
It works. It makes sense. It’s not very interesting. How about this?
The second-best process, and this is why we asked for a second choice, as well. So now you can use your judgment to determine of these high-ranking options, which one you think would be most appropriate. We are leaving your judgment and your expertise in this process of identifying processes.
Strongest alternative still adds a little student management but it keeps traffic localized and stable. So very, very nice and of course we can ask more about that if we want some further instructions or information.
Material Distribution
If we wanted to do a separate second process, now we can just say simply repeat it.
PROMPT
Consider several processes for student to submit their homework assignments with this layout. Reflect on the pros and cons of each. Compare them against each other to determine the single most efficient process that reduces potential for error or classroom disruption. Provide a second choice.
Repeat all those instructions I just gave you. But now the process is “how do we distribute materials?” Get stuff from kids; get stuff back to kids. We can also even further refine that depending on your instructional plan.
Now we have to do this multiple times. So, it is not as simple as just having packets ready to go at the beginning of the class. We need to do it multiple times. So how can I do it with these requirements under these conditions?
PROMPT
I have the same students for an extended period, and I need to distribute materials several times throughout the class. What is the best option?
We can follow up and continue to fine-tune until you have got something that is really going to work in your classroom.
What else can we do?
Classroom Entry and Exit
So, here is an example of one. We are not going to run it for the sake of time, but a lot of student management problems happen when kids are coming in or going out of the classroom.
PROMPT
Based on this classroom layout, I need an efficient way for students to exit the classroom in an orderly manner with minimal disruption or bottlenecks.
Your instructional plan is taking care of a lot or should be taking care of a lot of the issues during the class time. A lot of problems happen when they come in and they go out. Kids are bumping into each other and something happened in the hallway and who knows what. So, we can look at that one also under the same way.
Quick Formative Assessments
Then what if, thinking about the instructional time, you do a little spot check of students? What are some good ways for you to very quickly know are the kids getting it or not? So, you can determine what you do next. So we describe it during the class.
PROMPT
Several times during the class, students have a very brief formative assessment so I can spot-check for understanding. What processes could I use for this? Use the same criteria to select the best one, plus a second option.
A brief formative assessment so I can spot check what are some options and use those same criteria above or we do not have the above you put them in here. Low disruption low possibility for error things like that. Let us see what we get from this one.
Now, right here, the nice thing about this one is it is directly related to your instructional plan. Your instructional plan is your best tool for student management.
So, how do we make this as effective as possible? And some stuff. This is turning in stuff. Table group collection. So they do a little activity. One per table. Very nice. You or a student aid walks around, picks up stuff. Digital option. Raised card system. They have got a little put their answer or a little flag that says I am at this level of understanding or here is my response or to represent an answer.
Very very nice way to do it because then you can just go [gesture] and you can see where kids are. (That is one that I do quite a bit when I am doing trainings and workshops.)
Now, best minimization. So, we have got the different options here and the most efficient for those parameters, a digital response system. Well, what if you do not have that? Ah, table group collection?
But we can refine this further and say no digital option, make it cooperative.
PROMPT
I want to make this more cooperative, on a table-by-table basis. Make recommendations.
And what it is going to do is it is going to go back through those various options. It will look for some new ones. It will look at the ones it already gave you. It will see if there can be some modifications of those and ultimately give you a new approach.
A table consensus card. They discuss the formative prompt. They agree on the collective response, and the captain submits it to the teacher or holds it up or something.
Nice way to get the assessment back into the learning process.
Final Takeaway
So, there you go. A handful of great techniques for getting AI to help you with your classroom processes. Take care.