AI

AI vs Traditional Lesson Planning: Which is Better?

Adam Still
Adam Still

Planning lessons can take a great deal of time, and AI lesson planning can help ease the process. But how does it compare to traditional planning? AI is evolving quickly and professionals, including teachers, are reaching for it to help speed up their daily tasks. In this article we dive into how you can use AI to lesson plan and how that looks compared to the traditional planning methods you may be used to.

Table of Contents:

What is AI Lesson Planning?

AI is short for ‘artificial intelligence’ and in recent years it is a technology that has grown in capabilities and popularity. Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, can be free to use and can help people perform tasks. This includes lesson planning.

AI lesson planning uses generative AI models (these can help with content creation, data organisation, and data analysis) to help you form your very own lesson plan. With a prompt that details the subject, year group, and theme of the class, you can get AI to help you generate a template for your lesson plan.

4 Best Benefits of AI Lesson Planning

Wondering how AI lesson planning could benefit your processes compared to traditional methods? Look no further, here are the top 4 reasons to use AI to plan your next lesson:

  • Saving You Time - With a few taps of your keyboard to create a prompt, you can have your new lesson plan in minutes or even seconds. This can give you back time to spend on other activities such as marking, or give you some of your Sunday’s back!
  • Automation of Routine Tasks - Whether you like making quizzes to test your class’s knowledge or spend lots of time organising resources, AI lesson planning can assist with these routine tasks.
  • Adapts to Learning Styles - All students learn differently, easily transform your lesson plan to fit all of these.
  • Collate Resources in Seconds - Say goodbye to spending hours online looking for and collating resources for your next batch of lesson, AI can help you locate and organise these all in seconds.

What is Traditional Lesson Planning?

For years, teachers have had to meticulously create lesson plans by hand. Taking into account the curriculum, the year group of the students, and all of their learning styles, to create a detailed overview to teach. Alongside the top level lesson plan, teachers have also had to create resources, including quizzes, worksheets, presentations, and assessments.

All of this takes time, research, and great attention to detail. Which has seen teachers work well into their personal time and even weekends.

How Does AI Compare to Traditional Lesson Planning?

Still considering making the switch from traditional lesson planning to using the help of AI? Here’s how the two methods compare against each other:

  • Time - The biggest reason to choose AI when lesson planning is time and efficiency. With a quick prompt detailing who the lesson is for and what it’s about you can have a lesson plan to review and personalise in minutes. Traditionally this may have taken hours of research to put together.
  • Resource Collation & Creation - Familiar with spending long hours looking at school resources, the internet, and even the library to create the best worksheets and activities for your pupils? AI speeds this process up, collating the best resources from top education publishers for you to use in your lessons.
  • Learning Styles - In a class of 30 it’s likely you’ll have a range of learning styles to cater for. Whilst some students may be more visual, others may prefer reading and writing to hone their newfound knowledge. Instead of spending lots of time trying to be creative in ways to reach these children, AI lesson planners can help to convert your plan into each - so no child will feel left behind.

How Can Pango Help You Save Time Planning Lessons?

We have always been most concerned with helping teachers gain time back by making traditional lesson planning more efficient. Our collection of resources, created by the world’s leading education publishers, means you can quickly put together lessons complete with worksheets and activities.

Now with PangoGPT, that process is even quicker! With a simple prompt of the year you are teaching and the topic of the lesson, PangoGPT sources all you need from our private collection:

  • Learning Objectives
  • Lesson plan broken down by time, which could include:
    • Introduction
    • Main activity
    • Presentation
    • Group activity
    • Independent Practice
    • Class discussion
    • Individual tasks
    • Assessment opportunities
    • Plenary
  • Lesson Resources
  • Recommendations for post-class activities such as interventions and homework

Once your lesson plan is created you can personalise and refine it, making it longer or shorter, adapt it for different learning styles, find even more relevant resources from our collection, and plan following lessons. You can also find units and schemes of work to complement your lesson focus too. Fancy planning your next lesson in minutes not hours? Sign up to Pango now and receive a 7 day free trial!

3 Things to Remember When Using AI for Lessons

Generative AI is still relatively new to the masses and this means there’s a few things to take into account when using it to ensure you retain the quality of your lesson planning whilst becoming more efficient.

  • Biassed or Wrong Answers - Generative AI models are not perfect, their information comes from the internet which doesn’t always have the correct answers. When using AI to plan lessons or create resources, it’s really important that you fact check before implementing the results you get from it. Just like you would do with traditional lesson planning. This is particularly important in the education sector where you’re responsible for the learning and development of young children.
  • Outdated Information - The popular ChatGPT when first launched in 2022 could only access data up to 2021, meaning many answers given were out of date. This particular model can now access up to date information, but it’s important to take this into consideration when using any generative AI for lesson planning.
  • Lack of Understanding - If you’re trying to implement the use of AI for lesson planning in your school to make traditional planning more efficient, then it’s important to consider that colleagues may be opposed due to lack of knowledge. Make sure everyone using the technology is aware of how to use it and its limitations to aid trust building in the use of this tool.

Inspire the Next Generation with Pango’s Teaching Resources

Built by teachers, for teachers, Pango helps you to lighten the load of lesson planning. Say goodbye to Sunday planning days with the help of both AI technology and resources from leading educational publishers. From English teaching resources to Geography worksheets, high quality teaching resources are just one click away. Sign up today and receive a 7-day free trial for all of our premium content.