Day 17 of 20 · AI for Teachers
Curriculum Resources at Scale
⏱ 7 min
📊 Beginner
You know the feeling. You're teaching the Industrial Revolution next week and you need a knowledge organiser, a vocabulary list, a reading comprehension passage, a set of worked examples, and a revision guide. Creating all of that from scratch would take an entire Sunday afternoon — or longer.
Today you'll learn to build complete resource packs using AI. Not one resource at a time. An entire topic's worth of materials in 20 minutes.
The resource types every teacher needs
Before we start generating, let's be clear about what we're building. A solid resource bank for any topic typically includes:
Knowledge organisers — One-page summaries with key facts, dates, vocabulary, and diagrams. Students use them as reference sheets throughout the topic.
Revision guides — Condensed summaries designed for exam preparation. Key points, common exam questions, model answers.
Vocabulary lists — Key terms with definitions, example sentences, and (for younger students) visual cues. Essential for EAL students and for building subject-specific literacy.
Reading comprehension passages — Age-appropriate texts on the topic with retrieval, inference, and evaluation questions.
Worked examples — Step-by-step solutions showing how to approach a problem or question. Particularly important for maths and science but valuable in every subject.
Each of these would take 30-60 minutes to create from scratch. With AI, you can generate a first draft of each in 2-3 minutes — then spend your time refining rather than creating.
Knowledge Check
Why is generating a first draft with AI more efficient than creating resources from scratch?
A
Because teachers shouldn't create their own resources
B
It shifts your time from creation to refinement — editing a draft is faster than staring at a blank page and building everything from nothing
C
Because AI knows the curriculum better than teachers
D
Because AI-generated resources are always perfect on the first try
The blank page is the enemy. AI eliminates it. You still need to check accuracy, adjust difficulty, and tailor content to your class — but you're starting from a solid draft, not from zero. That shift from creator to editor typically cuts resource-making time by 60-80%.
Prompting for knowledge organisers
Knowledge organisers need a specific structure. Here's a prompt that works:
"Create a knowledge organiser for [subject] on the topic of [topic] for [year group/key stage]. Include: key vocabulary with definitions (8-10 terms), key facts or dates (8-10), key people or concepts (4-6), and a suggested layout with sections. The content should align with the [national curriculum / exam board specification]. Keep language accessible for [age group]."
The trick is specifying the structure upfront. If you just say "make a knowledge organiser," you'll get a wall of text. But if you specify sections, word counts, and layout, you get something that actually looks like a knowledge organiser and can go straight into a document template.
Pro tip: If you already have a school template for knowledge organisers, describe its layout in the prompt. "Our knowledge organisers have four quadrants: key vocabulary (top left), key dates (top right), key people (bottom left), and key questions (bottom right)." AI will format the content to match.
Reading comprehensions that actually work
Reading comprehensions are one of the most time-consuming resources to create. You need to write a passage at the right reading level, then create questions across different skill levels — retrieval, inference, vocabulary, and evaluation.
Here's the prompt:
"Write a reading comprehension passage for [year group] on [topic]. The passage should be [X words] and written at a reading age of [X]. Then create 8 questions: 3 retrieval (find the answer in the text), 2 inference (read between the lines), 2 vocabulary in context, and 1 evaluation (the child gives their opinion with evidence). Include an answer key."
By specifying the question types, you ensure the comprehension tests a range of skills — not just "find the answer in paragraph 3." The answer key saves you even more time when it comes to marking or creating a self-assessment version.
Knowledge Check
Why should you specify different question types when generating a reading comprehension?
A
Because retrieval questions are too easy to bother with
B
It ensures the comprehension tests a range of skills — retrieval, inference, vocabulary, and evaluation — rather than just surface-level recall
C
Because Ofsted requires exactly those question types
D
Because AI can only generate one question type at a time
A comprehension that only tests retrieval is really just a word search. By specifying inference, vocabulary, and evaluation questions, you create a resource that develops deeper reading skills. AI handles this easily — you just need to tell it what you want.
The 20-minute resource pack
Here's the system. Set a timer for 20 minutes and generate a complete topic resource pack:
Minutes 1-4: Generate the knowledge organiser. Review and tweak key facts.
Minutes 5-8: Generate the vocabulary list with definitions and example sentences. Check for accuracy.
Minutes 9-13: Generate the reading comprehension passage and questions. Adjust reading level if needed.
Minutes 14-17: Generate worked examples or model answers. Verify the steps are correct.
Minutes 18-20: Generate a revision guide summary. Review everything as a set.
Twenty minutes. Five resources. A full topic pack ready for your students. Compare that to the 4-5 hours it would take to create all of this from scratch.
A complete topic resource pack in 20 minutes. The same work would take 4-5 hours from scratch.
I'm a KS3 History teacher. I need a complete resource pack on the Industrial Revolution for Year 8. Start with a knowledge organiser. Include: key vocabulary (10 terms), key dates (8), key people (6), and key concepts (4). Align it with the National Curriculum. The language should be accessible for Year 8 students, including those with lower reading ages.
Here's your Industrial Revolution knowledge organiser:
---
**KNOWLEDGE ORGANISER: The Industrial Revolution**
*Year 8 History*
**KEY VOCABULARY**
1. **Industrialisation** — The shift from making things by hand to making them in factories using machines
2. **Factory system** — A way of working where large numbers of people work together in one building using powered machinery
3. **Urbanisation** — The movement of people from the countryside to towns and cities
4. **Steam power** — Energy produced by heating water to create steam, used to drive machines and locomotives
5. **Raw materials** — Natural resources (like cotton, coal, iron) used to make finished products
6. **Domestic system** — The old way of working where people made goods at home, often by hand
7. **Child labour** — Children working in factories, mines, and mills — often in dangerous conditions for very low pay
8. **Trade union** — A group of workers who join together to fight for better pay and conditions
9. **Empire** — A group of countries ruled by one powerful country — Britain's empire provided raw materials and markets
10. **Reform** — Changes to laws and systems to make them fairer
**KEY DATES**
1. 1712 — Thomas Newcomen builds the first practical steam engine
2. 1764 — James Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny
3. 1769 — James Watt improves the steam engine, making it more efficient
4. 1771 — Richard Arkwright opens the first water-powered cotton mill
5. 1799 — Combination Acts ban trade unions
6. 1833 — Factory Act limits child labour in textile mills
7. 1842 — Mines Act bans women and children from working underground
8. 1825 — First public railway opens (Stockton to Darlington)
**KEY PEOPLE**
1. **James Watt** — Improved the steam engine, powering the Industrial Revolution
2. **Richard Arkwright** — Built the first water-powered mill, pioneer of the factory system
3. **Robert Owen** — Factory owner who treated workers well and campaigned for reform
4. **Lord Shaftesbury** — Politician who fought for laws protecting children in factories and mines
5. **Isambard Kingdom Brunel** — Engineer who built bridges, tunnels, and the Great Western Railway
6. **George Stephenson** — Built the Rocket locomotive and pioneered railway travel
**KEY CONCEPTS**
1. Push and pull factors drove people from countryside to cities
2. New inventions created a chain reaction — one invention led to another
3. Wealth increased overall but was distributed very unequally
4. Reform happened slowly — change was driven by campaigners, not by factory owners
---
Want me to generate the vocabulary list with example sentences next, or move straight to the reading comprehension?
Brilliant. Now generate a reading comprehension passage on child labour during the Industrial Revolution. 400 words, reading age of 11-12. Include 8 questions: 3 retrieval, 2 inference, 2 vocabulary in context, 1 evaluation. Plus an answer key.
Here's your reading comprehension:
---
**READING COMPREHENSION: Children in the Factories**
*In 1833, a boy named Samuel Coulson stood before a group of politicians in London. He was asked to describe his life working in a cotton mill. He told them he started work at five o'clock every morning and didn't finish until nine at night. He was eight years old.*
*Samuel was not unusual. During the Industrial Revolution, thousands of children worked in factories, mines, and mills across Britain. Factory owners preferred children because they were cheap — earning just a few pennies a day — and their small hands could reach into machinery that adults couldn't.*
*The work was exhausting and dangerous. Children in cotton mills breathed in thick dust that damaged their lungs. In mines, boys as young as six dragged heavy carts of coal through tunnels so narrow they had to crawl. Accidents were common. Children who fell asleep at their machines were sometimes beaten by overseers to keep them awake.*
*Not everyone turned a blind eye. Robert Owen, a wealthy factory owner in Scotland, refused to employ children under ten and gave his young workers time for education. He believed that treating workers well was not just kind — it was good business. But Owen was the exception, not the rule.*
*Change came slowly. In 1833, the Factory Act made it illegal for children under nine to work in textile mills and limited older children to eight hours a day. The 1842 Mines Act banned girls and boys under ten from working underground. But these laws were difficult to enforce — inspectors were few, and some factory owners simply ignored the rules.*
*It took decades of campaigning by reformers like Lord Shaftesbury before children's lives truly improved. Even then, many families relied on their children's wages to survive. For them, reform meant less money coming in — a painful trade-off between safety and poverty.*
**QUESTIONS**
*Retrieval:*
1. At what time did Samuel Coulson start work each morning?
2. Name two types of workplace where children worked during the Industrial Revolution.
3. What did the 1842 Mines Act do?
*Inference:*
4. Why do you think factory owners preferred to employ children rather than adults?
5. Why might some families have been against the Factory Act, even though it protected children?
*Vocabulary in context:*
6. What does "turned a blind eye" mean in paragraph 4?
7. What does "the exception, not the rule" tell us about Robert Owen compared to other factory owners?
*Evaluation:*
8. Do you think Robert Owen was right that treating workers well was "good business"? Explain your answer using evidence from the text.
**ANSWER KEY**
1. Five o'clock
2. Any two from: factories, mines, mills
3. It banned girls and boys under ten from working underground
4. Children were cheaper (pennies a day) and their small hands could reach into machinery — inference from paragraph 2
5. Families relied on children's wages to survive, so limiting work hours meant less income
6. It means to ignore something or pretend not to notice
7. It means Owen was unusual — most factory owners did not treat workers well
8. Open response — look for reference to Owen's success or argument about productivity/loyalty
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Want me to continue with worked examples or the revision guide?
↻ Replay conversation
Knowledge Check
After generating a resource pack with AI, what should be your first priority?
A
Delete it and start again from scratch
B
Generate three more packs before reviewing any of them
C
Share it with students immediately to save time
D
Check the content for factual accuracy — AI can make mistakes with dates, names, and historical details
AI is a powerful drafting tool, but it's not infallible — especially with historical facts, scientific data, and curriculum-specific details. Always verify dates, names, and key facts before sharing with students. The time you save on creation should partly go into quality checking.
Adapting for different abilities
One of the most powerful uses of AI for resource creation is differentiation. Once you have your base resource, generating adapted versions takes seconds:
"Take this reading comprehension and simplify it for students with a reading age of 8-9. Keep the same content and questions but use shorter sentences, simpler vocabulary, and add a word bank for the vocabulary questions."
Or in the other direction: "Create an extension version with two additional analysis questions and a challenge task where students compare this source to a modern equivalent."
Three versions of the same resource — foundation, core, and extension — in under 5 minutes. That's differentiation that actually happens, rather than differentiation that exists only in your lesson plan.
Final Check
Why is AI particularly effective for creating differentiated resources?
A
Because AI only creates resources at one difficulty level
B
Because adapting an existing resource for different ability levels takes seconds — you prompt AI to simplify or extend the same content rather than creating three separate resources from scratch
C
Because differentiated resources aren't important anyway
D
Because AI automatically knows each student's reading level
Differentiation is one of those things every teacher believes in but rarely has time to do properly. AI removes the time barrier. Once your base resource exists, generating a simplified version or an extension version is a single prompt away. The result is genuinely differentiated resources — not just the same worksheet with a different header.
📚
Day 17 Complete
"A complete topic resource pack in 20 minutes — not because you cut corners, but because AI handled the drafting while you focused on quality."
Tomorrow — Day 18
Using AI Responsibly in the Classroom
Tomorrow is a unique lesson — you'll explore how to teach your students about AI, set homework policies, and have honest conversations about AI in education.