Summer is nearly here, and I know we are all looking forward to moving at a slower pace for a few months. We finally get the space to reflect, recharge, and explore new ideas without the constant demands of our classrooms. This summer, if you’re looking to build your confidence with emerging tools while preparing for the year ahead, there’s one area that’s worth dipping your toes into: artificial intelligence.
I’ll be honest – I was skeptical at first. AI felt like another tech buzzword with more hype than practical use. But after attending CUE with my team this spring, I saw something different. I saw AI being used for so many uses – to save time, personalize learning, and enhance instruction in ways that felt real and relevant.
Summer is the perfect low-stakes time to explore AI tools. There’s no pressure to implement something tomorrow. You can try things out, click around, and begin to imagine how AI might support your teaching in the fall.
In this follow-up to Melinda’s newsletter about ways AI can support your reading instruction, we offer five summer-friendly ways to begin experimenting with AI so you’re ready to work smarter, not harder, when school starts up again.
1. Automate the Mundane: Practice Saving Time Now
Start by playing with AI tools that eliminate some of the time-consuming tasks that fill your school week. You can test these tools on past assignments or create mock materials just to see how they work.
Try this over the summer:
- Use ChatGPT or MagicSchool.ai to create rubrics for a few writing tasks you typically assign. You can create both student- and teacher-facing versions of your rubrics and checklists so grading is more systematized and efficient.
- Generate draft templates that will be useful for next year: family emails, weekly newsletters, homework cover pages, anything that can be templatized!
- Explore how tools like Google Forms with AI add-ons grade student responses and generate reports.
Even a few hours of experimentation now can help you walk into the fall with plug-and-play systems that will give you back time during the year.
2. Personalize Learning with Data Without the Stress
Want to get better at data-driven differentiation next year? Summer is the time to learn the ropes without the deadlines of grading. AI tools can show you how to group students by skill, scaffold assignments, and even provide leveled texts.
Try this over the summer:
- Upload or input mock data into an AI platform to explore how it groups students by skill or standard. Play with the most effective prompts to use to group students. Try:
- Use Khan Academy or Quill to simulate differentiated learning paths based on a student’s “profile.” Test them out yourself and see what the experience is like from the student’s point of view.
- Ask an AI tool to generate three versions of a reading passage or math task—on grade level, below, and above.
This exploration will help you walk into your next school year with a stronger sense of how to meet students where they are.
3. Let AI Be Your Summer Planning Partner
If you’re someone who likes to do a little planning during summer, AI can be an amazing co-creator. Think of it like a first draft assistant. It won’t be perfect, but it can definitely jumpstart your ideas.
Try this over the summer:
- Draft lessons on topics you’ll teach early in the year. Try different lesson formats as you plan – minilessons, jigsaws, partner work, project-based learning.
- Ask AI to create quiz questions, vocabulary lists, or even a PowerPoint on standards you know are tricky.
- Play with AI to design a first-week-of-school unit that blends SEL, community-building, and review of the previous grade’s key skills.
By building a few lessons or routines now, you’ll save yourself hours in the first month back.
4. Level Up Your Curriculum Mapping and Long-Term Vision
How often do we get all the way through a unit and think about all the ways to revise it, but by the time the unit rolls around the next year, we’ve forgotten all of our ideas? If you’ve ever wanted to redesign a unit or adjust your pacing guide, but didn’t have the time, then summer is ideal for this kind of big-picture thinking. AI can support the strategic parts of teaching by organizing, aligning, and suggesting instructional sequences.
Try this over the summer:
- Copy your state standards into an AI tool and ask for a suggested scope and sequence.
- Ask AI to outline a thematic unit across 4–6 weeks, including essential questions and text recommendations.
- Use ChatGPT to revise a past unit with better scaffolding or update it with stronger connections to student interests.
Even if you don’t use the AI’s plan exactly, it can push your thinking and save you from staring at a blank document.
5. Test Out Student-Facing Tools
One of the biggest challenges is teaching students how to use AI responsibly. Summer is a great time to try out student-facing tools and decide how you’ll introduce them, set boundaries, and tie them to your goals.
Try this over the summer:
- Experiment with a platform like Grammarly or Quill from a student’s point of view. See what feedback they give and what’s the most helpful or potentially confusing. This will help you decide how to introduce specific tools in ways that will set students up for success.
- Explore how an AI tutor walks students through a math or science concept.
- Try generating AI-based flashcards or summaries from a piece of text to see how students might use them for review.
As you play with these tools, think about how to introduce them in a way that emphasizes revision, reflection, and choice instead of shortcuts.
Just for Fun: Play with AI for Personal Projects
Summer is also a great time to step outside of our teacher role and take some time for our other hobbies, goals, and everyday tasks to manage. One of the best ways to build confidence using AI is to try it in your personal life. When the stakes are low and the tasks are fun, you’ll start to see how versatile and user-friendly AI can be.
Here are a few ideas to get started:
- Meal planning and recipes: Tell ChatGPT what ingredients you have on hand and ask it to suggest simple meals. You can also ask for vegetarian, kid-friendly, or time-saving options based on your preferences.
- Travel and itinerary planning: If you’re planning a road trip or day trip this summer, you can use AI to create an itinerary that includes local restaurants, sightseeing, and hidden gems.
- Creative writing or journaling: Use AI to help brainstorm story ideas, generate poetry prompts, or co-write a short story just for fun. Take some time to use AI to tap into your creative side!
- Fitness and wellness routines: Ask AI to suggest a summer workout plan, mindfulness routine, or sleep strategy based on your goals.
- Organization and productivity: Let AI help you make a checklist, create a simple schedule, or suggest tools and resources to help you declutter, budget, or start a new habit.
Using AI in personal, playful ways helps you build fluency and see how the technology thinks, which in turn makes you a more savvy, confident guide when you begin using it with students. Plus, you may find that AI becomes a helpful assistant in making your summer more enjoyable, efficient, and inspired.
Final Thoughts: AI is Your Summer Sandbox
If you carve out even a little time to explore, test, and imagine the AI possibilities, you’ll start the year with tools that support your work instead of complicating it.
Think of AI as your summer sandbox—a space to play, experiment, and prepare for a smoother, more empowered year. One thing that was reiterated at CUE was this: AI won’t replace your humanity, intuition, or heart. But it can give you back time, inspire new ideas, and help you center your energy where it belongs: with your students.
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