It’s Thursday night, and your PLC meeting is tomorrow.

You are yet to combine assessment scores, student work in another, and your half-finished notes about the strategies you tried. You know your students well enough to say, “They struggled with the last part,” but your PLC needs something more useful:

• Which students have demonstrated the standard?

• Where is the class getting stuck?

• Which instructional strategies appear to be helping?

• What should change in the next unit?

• Which students need additional support, practice, or extension?

A useful PLC data report connects student evidence to instructional decisions.

Colleague AI helps teachers organize those connections while keeping professional judgment where it belongs, with the educators who know the students and taught the lessons.

The Week 4 problem: You have data, and it hasn’t become a plan yet

By the fourth week of school, most teachers have collected plenty of information.

There may be an initial diagnostic, daily exit tickets, a quiz, written responses, participation notes, and observations from small-group work. Each source offers part of the story. Finding the pattern across them takes focused analysis at a point in the school year when focused time is already scarce.

A typical PLC template asks teachers to report:

1. Student performance trends

2. Standards or skills requiring additional instruction

3. Strategies already attempted

4. Student groups needing targeted support

5. Adjustments planned for the next unit

The challenge sits in moving from entries in a gradebook to claims you can support with evidence.

“Students struggled with citing evidence” does not have sufficient detail or specifics to drive a conversation about what the problem might be and how to address it.

“16 of 28 students selected relevant evidence, while 10 clearly explained how the evidence supported their reasoning” gives the team an instructional problem it can act on.

What Colleague AI does with your classroom evidence

Colleague AI works from the data, instructional materials, and context the teacher provides. It can organize performance trends, connect findings to standards, summarize strategies already used, and draft next-step recommendations for teacher review.

The resulting report gives a PLC a shared starting point for discussion. Teachers can correct the interpretation, add classroom context, and decide which adjustments fit their students.

A sample PLC data report

Consider a sixth-grade ELA teacher preparing to discuss a standards-aligned written response assessment.

The teacher provides:

• Assessment results for 28 students

• The scoring rubric

• The standard assessed

• Three anonymized student responses

• Notes from two small-group lessons

• Exit-ticket results from the following day

Colleague AI organizes the information into a report like this:

Student performance trends

Standard assessed: Cite relevant textual evidence and explain how it supports an analysis.

• 21 of 28 students identified the central idea accurately.

• 16 of 28 students selected evidence directly related to the central idea.

• 10 of 28 students explained how their evidence supported their reasoning.

• Five students included evidence without connecting it to their claim.

• Three students wrote accurate verbal explanations during small-group discussion and submitted incomplete written responses.

Primary classwide pattern: Students show stronger understanding when identifying ideas and selecting evidence. Written reasoning remains the largest shared area for additional instruction.

Strategies tried

1. The teacher modeled a complete claim-evidence-reasoning response.

2. Students color-coded the claim, evidence, and explanation in a sample paragraph.

3. A small group practiced oral explanations before writing.

4. Students used the sentence frame: “This evidence supports my claim because…”

5. The class reviewed one anonymous response and revised its explanation together.

Evidence of response to instruction

• 91 of the 12 students who used the sentence frame completed an explanation.

• Four students removed the sentence frame independently and maintained a clear reasoning structure.

• Students in the oral-rehearsal group produced more complete explanations during the second exit ticket.

• Two students continued to select loosely related evidence and need additional modeling with shorter texts.

Recommended next-unit adjustments

1. Include one brief evidence-explanation task during each of the first three lessons.

2. Continue oral rehearsal as an option before independent writing.

3. Use two contrasting examples so students can compare relevant and loosely related evidence.

4. Create a temporary support group for the five students who cited evidence without explaining it.

5. Offer an extension task asking students to evaluate which of two evidence choices provides stronger support.

6. Collect a three-question check before the next full written response.

That report gives the PLC something concrete to examine. The discussion can move toward grouping, shared instructional routines, and common checks for understanding.

How to create your PLC data report in Colleague AI

1. Gather the evidence your PLC needs

Start with the smallest useful set of information. You rarely need every assignment from the first month of school.

Bring together:

1. The standard or learning goal

2. Results from one shared assessment or task

3. The rubric, answer key, or success criteria

4. Relevant student work samples with identifiers removed

5. Notes about strategies already attempted

6. Any follow-up exit tickets or checks for understanding

A clear evidence set produces a clearer analysis.

2. Generate a PLC Agenda

Numbers alone can’t explain what happened during instruction. Add the context that helps interpret them.

You might write:

Create a PLC data report for our Week 4 meeting. Analyze student performance on the attached assessment using the rubric and standard provided. Identify classwide trends, strengths, unfinished learning, and student group patterns supported by the data. Include the strategies I have already tried and recommend specific adjustments for the next unit. Separate observations from recommendations. Do not infer student needs that aren’t supported by the evidence.

This direction keeps the report tied to the materials you supplied.

Attach relevant documents.

Paste any relevant details from other sources.

3. Review the performance claims

Read each finding and compare it with what you observed.

Ask:

1. Does the report describe the evidence accurately?

2. Are the student counts and percentages correct?

3. Does a pattern appear across multiple sources?

4. Is any classroom context missing?

5. Does the wording avoid assumptions about why students performed as they did?

Colleague AI provides structure and analysis but you need to confirm what the evidence means.

4. Have You Missed Anything? A Quick Reflection

Context is incredibly useful not just for Colleague AI’s system, but also for the people reading your report! It’s hard to ensure you’ve brain-dumped everything you wanted into your report, so it’s worthwhile to take a minute to reflect on the output before you.

Recording previous instruction helps the team understand which supports students have already received. With this in mind, consider if you should include details such as:

• Modeling or think-alouds

• Small-group instruction

• Worked examples

• Sentence frames

• Visual supports

• Additional practice

• Peer discussions

• Oral rehearsals

• Feedback and revision opportunities

Colleague AI can connect those strategies to later student evidence, while you determine how strongly the evidence supports the connection.

Also, anticipate questions! Useful PLC discussion questions might include:

• Which routine has helped your students explain their reasoning?

• Are we seeing the same pattern across classes?

• Which common check could we use before the next assessment?

• Which students may benefit from regrouping across classrooms?

Does your report ready you to answer these?

5. Turn the patterns into next-unit adjustments

Ask Colleague AI to sort recommendations by purpose:

1. Whole-class instruction: Skills that require additional modeling or guided practice

2. Targeted support: Students who need another entry point, additional time, or a smaller instructional group

3. Extension: Students ready to apply the skill with greater independence or complexity

4. Progress monitoring: A brief way to check whether the adjustment worked

Each recommendation should name an instructional action and the evidence that prompted it.

“Reteach citing evidence” remains broad.

“Use two short passages to compare relevant and weak evidence choices, then check understanding with a three-item exit ticket” gives the PLC a plan.

6. One Last Review

Before you finalize:

1. Confirm every number against the original source.

2. Check the language to reflect your classroom observations.

3. Mark any interpretation you want the team to discuss.

It’s Week 4. Your students have read the text, annotated a few passages, and written responses to discussion questions.

Tomorrow’s lesson is a Socratic seminar….but there’s one problem: most of your students have never participated in one.

A few will hear “discussion” and prepare to dominate it. Others will wait quietly for you to call on them. Several students may have thoughts and no idea how to enter the conversation. Someone will ask whether this is graded before you’ve finished explaining the directions.

This is clearly a great learning opportunity for your students, each bringing different capabilities and experiences to the table. However, helping students prepare, and preparing on your own to make that happen, takes time, effort, and resources. The seminar can still work, but students need more than a circle of desks and a list of questions: they need to see what successful participation looks and sounds like before the discussion begins.

Here we share how Colleague AI can help you create a student preparation packet: discussion norms, sentence starters, a facilitation guide, and a student self-assessment rubric tied to the goals of the lesson.

Start With the Situation You Actually Have

A useful prompt gives Colleague AI the context a fellow colleague would need.

Include:

1. The grade level and subject

2. The text, unit, or topic

3. The discussion goal

4. Students’ prior experience

5. Any participation needs or classroom considerations

6. The length of the class period

7. The materials you want created

A seventh-grade ELA teacher might write:

My seventh-grade students are preparing to discuss the choices characters make under pressure in our current novel. Most students have never participated in a Socratic seminar. Create a 45-minute introductory seminar protocol that teaches students how to participate. Include student-friendly discussion norms, sentence starters, a teacher facilitation guide, and a short self-assessment rubric. Build in ways for hesitant speakers, multilingual learners, and students who need processing time to contribute.

Because the prompt includes the students’ experience level, the response can teach the routine alongside the content. The teacher receives materials built for an introductory seminar rather than a protocol designed for students who already know the process.

How to Build a Socratic Seminar Assignment Using AI

1. Generate Student-Friendly Discussion Norms

Students often receive directions such as “respond respectfully” or “build on each other’s ideas.” Those directions name the goal, but students also need examples of the actions that produce it.

Use Colleague AI to generate broad expectations and specific observable behaviors or actions:.

Sample discussion norms

Our seminar agreements

1. Bring the conversation back to the text.
   Point to a passage, event, or detail that supports your thinking.

2. Listen for an idea you can build on.
   Connect your comment to something another person has already said.

3. Make room and take room.
   Contribute your thinking and notice when others are waiting to enter.

4. Disagree with an idea carefully.
   Explain your reasoning without judging the person who shared it.

5. Ask questions that help the group think.
   A strong question can move the discussion forward even when you don’t have a complete answer.

6. Allow thinking time.
   A pause gives everyone time to process. Silence doesn’t mean the conversation has failed.

These norms give the teacher language to model, reinforce, and revisit. They also give students clear criteria for monitoring themselves during the discussion.

2. Create Sentence Starters Students Can Actually Use

Sentence starters can widen access to discussion when they support authentic thinking rather than turn every response into the same formula.

Ask Colleague AI to organize them by conversational purpose.

Sample sentence starters

To enter the conversation

• I’d like to return to the idea that…

• One detail I noticed was…

• I have a question about…

• I’m still working through this, and I think…

To build on someone’s thinking

• I agree with ___ because the text also shows…

• What ___ said makes me think about…

• I want to add another example to that idea…

• I see a connection between that point and…

To disagree or offer another interpretation

• I interpreted that part differently because…

• I see the evidence you’re using. Another possibility is…

• Could the character’s decision also suggest…?

• I’m wondering whether that conclusion changes when we consider…

To invite another person into the discussion

• ___, what did you notice in this section?

• We haven’t heard this side of the circle yet.

• Does anyone have a different reading of this passage?

• Who can connect this idea to an earlier part of the text?

To ask for time or clarification

• Could you say more about what you mean?

• Can we return to that question after a moment?

• I need a little processing time before I respond.

• Which part of the text led you to that conclusion?

Students can keep these starters beside their annotations. The teacher can also select a smaller set for students who benefit from fewer choices.

3. Create a Facilitation Guide for Yourself (Or co-teacher, assistant)

An introductory Socratic seminar requires active preparation from the teacher and disciplined restraint during the discussion.

Colleague AI can create a facilitation guide with suggested timing, teacher moves, and decision points.

Sample 45-minute facilitation guide

Minutes 0–5: Introduce the purpose

Explain that the goal is to develop ideas together through evidence, questions, and careful listening. Review the discussion norms and clarify that strong participation can include asking a question, inviting a peer in, citing evidence, or connecting two ideas.

Minutes 5–10: Model a discussion move

Show students one weak response and one stronger response.

Weak response:

I agree.

Stronger response:

I agree with Maya’s point that the character felt trapped. The description in paragraph 12 shows that he believed every available choice would hurt someone.

Ask students what the second response contributes to the group.

Minutes 10–13: Prepare individually

Give students three quiet minutes to:

1. Star one passage they may cite

2. Choose one sentence starter

3. Write one question they could ask

4. Identify one idea they’re still considering

Minutes 13–35: Conduct the seminar

Open with the central question. Track participation without interrupting the flow of the discussion.

Use a teacher prompt only when the group needs support:

• What evidence could help us examine that idea?

• Who can connect these two interpretations?

• Which assumption are we making?

• What question has the group avoided?

• Whose perspective could help us see this differently?

Minutes 35–40: Close the discussion

Ask each student to write one idea that changed, grew, or became more complicated during the seminar.

Invite two or three students to share.

Minutes 40–45: Complete the self-assessment

Students rate their participation and identify one goal for the next seminar.

This guide gives the teacher enough structure to protect the conditions for discussion while leaving the intellectual work with students.

4. Generate a Self-Assessment Rubric

A first seminar works best when students are assessed on learnable discussion behaviors. A student who speaks six times hasn’t automatically contributed more than a student who asks one question that changes the direction of the conversation.

Create a brief rubric students complete immediately after the seminar.

Sample student self-assessment

Rate yourself from 1 to 4 for each statement.

Reflection questions

1. What did you contribute to the group’s thinking?

2. Which idea from another student affected your thinking?

3. What will you try during the next seminar?

The completed reflection can serve as a formative data point. Before the next seminar, the teacher can review patterns, reteach one discussion skill, and adjust supports for individual students or the full class.

Adjust the Materials Before You Teach

Colleague AI provides a strong first draft. The teacher still knows the students, the text, and the purpose of the lesson.

Review the materials and make a few deliberate choices:

1. Reduce the number of sentence starters when the full list may feel overwhelming.

2. Add text-specific vocabulary students will need during the discussion.

3. Choose the central question yourself or revise the generated question to match the intellectual work of the unit.

4. Decide how students will participate, including a single circle, fishbowl, partner rehearsal, written backchannel, or smaller seminar groups.

5. Adjust the rubric language to reflect the discussion skills you’ve already taught.

6. Plan access supports, including translated directions, visual cues, additional processing time, or the option to submit a written contribution.

Give Students a Rehearsal Before the Circle

Students’ first experience with a Socratic seminar shouldn’t begin the moment they move their desks.

Use five minutes during the previous lesson to rehearse one discussion move. Students can practice building on a partner’s idea, disagreeing with evidence, or inviting another person into the conversation.

That small rehearsal creates shared expectations. It also gives students a chance to use the sentence starters before they’re managing a full-group discussion.

By the time the seminar begins, students know:

1. What they’re discussing

2. What successful participation looks like

3. What language they can use

4. How the teacher will support the process

5. How they’ll reflect afterward

The circle of desks is the least complicated part.

Colleague AI helps teachers build the conditions around the discussion so students can focus on listening, reasoning, and developing ideas together. The first seminar may still include long pauses, overlapping voices, and a student who forgets the question halfway through an answer, but students are learning a discussion practice, and the teacher now has a protocol they can refine and use again.

By Week 5, one student keeps pulling your attention.

They’re in class most days, aren’t causing major disruptions, and their grades haven’t fallen far enough to trigger an automatic referral, but still, something is off.

They put their head down during independent work. They ask to use the bathroom when writing begins. They complete assignments when an adult sits beside them, then turn in almost nothing the next day. During a private check-in, they say they’re fine.

You’ve shortened tasks, moved their seat, repeated directions, offered breaks, and checked in more times than you can count. You’re starting to wonder whether the problem is skill, confidence, attention, stress, attendance, or several things at once.

This is the Week 5 MTSS problem: the student needs support now, and the evidence is still scattered across your gradebook, observation notes, unfinished assignments, and memory.

Colleague AI helps teachers turn that scattered evidence into an intervention cycle they can use, track, and share with the school’s MTSS team.

The Situation Teachers Actually See

Imagine a sixth-grade student named Maya.

During whole-class discussion, Maya occasionally gives strong answers. During partner work, she participates when paired with a familiar classmate. During independent work, she often:

1. Waits several minutes before beginning.

2. Asks to leave the room.

3. Writes one or two words, then stops.

4. Says, “I don’t know,” before reading the full question.

5. Completes more work when the teacher stays nearby.

6. Becomes quiet or tearful when asked about missing assignments.

Her recent scores are inconsistent:

• 8 out of 10 on a vocabulary check

• 2 out of 8 on a written response

• 0 on 2 missing assignments

• A strong verbal explanation during a teacher conference

Maya hasn’t qualified for a formal support plan, but she still needs a clear instructional response.

Step 1: Choose “Supporting Students Below Grade” and Turn Your Concern Into an MTSS Problem Statement

Start by telling Claire, the AI Assistant, that you need to create an MTSS problem statement.

Claire will likely ask for more context, such as:

• What area of concern are you focusing on? (Academic—like reading, math, writing? Behavioral? Attendance? Social-emotional?)
• What data are you seeing that's raising the concern? (For example: benchmark scores, progress monitoring data, office referrals, grades, teacher observations, etc.)
• Which students or grade level are affected? (A specific grade? A particular group of students? Schoolwide?)
• What have you noticed or what prompted the need for this problem statement? (Are students not responding to Tier 1 instruction? Is there a gap between expected and actual performance?)
• Do you have any baseline data or percentages? (For example: "60% of 3rd graders are below benchmark in reading fluency")

Provide as much context and information you can such as:

• The task or setting where the concern appears

• The frequency of the behavior

• Relevant academic data

• Observable emotional or behavioral signals

• Supports already attempted

• Conditions where the student is more successful

• Student strengths

• Attendance or transition information that may matter

Sample Description

Maya participates during discussion and can explain ideas verbally. During independent written work, she often waits five to ten minutes before starting, asks to leave the room, or writes only a few words. She completed three of eight independent assignments during the past three weeks. She finishes more work when I sit near her or let her talk through the answer first. I have tried chunking assignments, giving sentence starters, changing her seat, offering short breaks, and checking directions privately. She sometimes becomes tearful when I ask about missing work.

Step 2: Review the Problem Statement

Review the language, correct any inaccuracies, and add specific dates.

Now the concern is measurable.

Step 3: Separate the Skill Need From the Access Need

MTSS support becomes more useful when the teacher can identify where the task begins to break down.

Maya’s incomplete writing could come from several places:

1. She may misunderstand the text.

2. She may understand the text and struggle to organize a response.

3. She may know what to say and struggle to begin independently.

4. She may experience stress once the assignment feels large.

5. She may need support across several of these areas.

A short diagnostic assessment helps the teacher gather targeted evidence.

Step 4: Choose “Create Interactive” and Create a Brief Diagnostic Assessment

The goal is a focused check that a teacher can give during class, intervention time, or a short conference.

Tell Colleague AI what you want to achieve, the context, and a narrow instructional question:

Can Maya identify a relevant detail, explain her thinking aloud, and turn that explanation into a written response?

This question examines comprehension, oral reasoning, written expression, and task initiation.

Add context such as:

• Grade and subject

• Current standard or learning target

• Type of text students are reading

• Length of the assessment

• Supports the student may use

• Behaviors the teacher wants to observe

Sample Prompt

Create a 10-minute diagnostic assessment for a sixth-grade social studies student. The learning target is using evidence from an informational text to explain an idea. Include a short passage, one comprehension question, one evidence-selection task, one oral response prompt, and one written response. Add an observation checklist for task initiation, help-seeking, persistence, oral reasoning, and written response construction.

Generate the interactive, then review it.

Step 5. Assign the Diagnostic and Observe the Process

When it’s time, assign the diagnostic assessment to Maya and record what she does during each part.

Example Observation Notes

• Began multiple-choice question within 30 seconds

• Selected the correct answer

• Identified relevant evidence independently

• Explained the answer clearly aloud

• Waited four minutes before beginning the written response

• Asked, “Does this have to be a full sentence?”

• Completed the response after verbal rehearsal and a sentence frame

• Appeared calmer after the task was reduced to one sentence at a time

Maya understood the content. She located relevant evidence. She explained her thinking orally.

The largest breakdown appeared during independent initiation and written response construction, especially when the task felt open-ended.

Now we have a realistic Tier 2 target.

Step 6: Build a Right-Sized Tier 2 Intervention

Colleague AI can draft an intervention plan based on the teacher’s evidence and the district’s MTSS format.

Provide the context, links to the diagnostic assessment, your MTSS problem statement, and anything else that might be useful to the AI Assistant, such as an intervention goal:

“During independent written-response tasks, Maya will begin within three minutes and complete an answer containing a claim and one supporting detail in 4 of 5 opportunities, using a visual task checklist and one verbal rehearsal.”

Specify what kind of intervention you want (or you can ask the AI assistant for a recommendation based on best practices). For example, you might want a 2-week intervention, but if your school uses block periods or different scheduling systems, 1 week or 3 weeks might be more appropriate.

Having a Tier 2 plan helps you to then execute - you can use the plan within Colleague AI to create differentiated materials, assignments, additional activities, assessments, and more for Maya.

Step 7: Document the Intervention

MTSS documentation often falls apart because teachers are expected to record every intervention while teaching everyone else.

Colleague AI turns brief notes into clear progress language.

You can return to this document and add to it on a daily basis. For example, you may record a note:

Started after 6 min. Needed me to talk through question. Wrote first sentence after prompt. Finished 2 of 3 parts. Looked overwhelmed at first.

And Colleague AI will turn that into a professional-sounding observation note:

Maya began the independent written task after six minutes. She verbally rehearsed her response with the teacher and completed the first sentence following one verbal prompt. She completed two of three required response components. Maya initially showed signs of distress, including looking away from the task and stating that she could not complete it. Engagement increased after the task was presented one step at a time.

Step 8: Track Academic and SEL Signals Together

The intervention targets classroom access alongside academic performance.

A useful progress tracker might include:

The student signal column gives the team context. It captures observable patterns and student statements. It avoids diagnosis.

Colleague AI can summarize the data before an MTSS meeting:

Across four intervention opportunities, Maya began within three minutes in three instances, compared with a baseline rate of two out of five. She completed all response components in two instances and two of three components in the remaining two. Verbal rehearsal was used during the first two sessions and was no longer requested during the fourth session. Avoidance behaviors decreased as the task routine became more predictable.

The Student Now Has a Support Cycle

The Week 5 student may still need time, stronger intervention, family insight, additional screening, or a formal evaluation process.

The teacher now has:

1. A measurable concern

2. A focused diagnostic assessment

3. Baseline evidence

4. A Tier 2 intervention

5. Academic and SEL progress indicators

Colleague AI can also assist with family communication, an MTSS summary, and any documentation required for intervention reviews. The platform is designed to support each part of that cycle while the teacher and school team make the decisions.

The student who kept pulling at the teacher’s attention now has a documented response, a shared plan, and adults watching the same evidence.

You’ve introduced the unit vocabulary three times. The words are on the wall, students copied the definitions, you’ve used them during instruction….and after all that, a few students can match the terms on a quiz.

And when you ask students to explain their thinking, and the vocabulary disappears.

Instead of infer, they say “guess.” Instead of erosion, they say “when the dirt moves.” Instead of character motivation, they say “why the person did it.”

By Week 3, this is a common instructional problem: students have encountered the vocabulary, and they still need repeated opportunities to connect each term to ideas, examples, relationships, and real situations - application situations and being pushed further up Bloom’s taxonomy.

Colleague AI can help teachers create those opportunities from the vocabulary they’re already teaching.

The Situation: Students Know the Definitions, Sort Of

Imagine you’re beginning the third week of a middle school science unit on Earth’s surface.

Your vocabulary list includes:

1. Weathering

2. Erosion

3. Deposition

4. Sediment

5. Landform

6. Runoff

Students completed a vocabulary chart during Week 1. You reviewed the terms with slides. They used the words in a digital matching activity.

On Monday, you show an image of a river carrying soil downstream and ask students to explain what’s happening.

A student says:

“The water is moving the dirt somewhere else.”

The student understands the basic process but the vocab hasn’t become part of how they communicate their understanding.

Another round of copying definitions probably won’t change that.

Students need to compare the terms, sort them, apply them, and use them to explain something that matters.

How to Create Activities That Get Vocabulary to Stick

Give Colleague AI the unit context, grade level, standards, and vocabulary list, then ask for several activities that require students to use the words in different ways.

Step 1: Start a Generate Interactive and add the instructional context

Start by launching a generate interactive session and give information Colleague AI needs to create classroom-ready materials. Include:

1. Grade level

2. Subject and unit

3. Vocabulary terms

4. What students already know
   Where students are getting stuck

5. Any reading, language, or accessibility needs

Example prompt

I teach seventh-grade science. We are studying how water changes Earth’s surface. Students have already learned the definitions of weathering, erosion, deposition, sediment, landform, and runoff, but they rarely use the terms when explaining diagrams or real-world examples. Create a short sequence of student-facing vocabulary activities that helps students distinguish between the terms and use them in complete scientific explanations. Include supports for multilingual learners and students who need sentence frames.

Be sure to note any requirements you want in the requirements section:

• Grade level
• Standard
• Reading, language, or accessibility needs
• etc.

Step 2: Choose Your Activity Type

Colleague AI gives you the opportunity to choose from a variety of activities:

1. Homework

2. Worksheet

3. Games

4. Quizzes

5. Poster

6. Flashcards

7. Graphic organizers

8. Storyboards

9. Newsletters

10. Class schedules

11. Surveys

12. Infographics

13. Animations

14. Research reports

15. And a few others that don’t apply here

In this case, a worksheet or game would give an opportunity to apply their knowledge.

Step 3: Choose Your Theme

It’s up to you if you want to choose a theme or not - it will depend on your class, grade level, and what gets their attention. It’s unlikely that a Harry Potter theme would apply well here….but the choice is yours.

Step 4: Check Your Prompt Before Generating

It’s useful to re-read your prompt before hitting the generate button.

Things to consider in the instructions would be:

• Specifying specific activities you may want the student to do
• Specifying things you do NOT want students to do
• Information on style or design or colors
• Talking about levels in Bloom’s taxonomy, DOK levels, or other applicable frameworks and models

In this case, we may want to add specific activities we want to see:

• a sorting task that asks students to group terms by process, cause, sequence, or relationship

• short scenarios that require students to select and use the correct terms

• Partner discussion card activity

• A total of 5 activities for this assignment

Step 5: Generate!

Step 6: Adjust the activity for your students

The first output is a starting point.

Teachers can ask Colleague AI to revise the activity based on what they know about their class.

Useful follow-up requests include:

1. “Add picture cues for each term.”

2. “Rewrite this at a fifth-grade reading level.”

3. “Create sentence frames at three levels of support.”

4. “Add Spanish cognates where appropriate.”

5. “Create an extension that requires students to defend their word choices.”

6. “Create an exit ticket using the same vocabulary.”

Colleague AI provides the context and materials. Teachers decide which supports preserve the learning goal and which revisions fit the students in front of them.

Step 7: Publish, Assign and Distribute

When your activity is ready, click the publish button.

You can choose whether this is an assessment or just an assignment - in our case, it’s not an assessment, it’s practice.

Now your students will see it in their dashboard. You can also send them a link.

Step 8: View Your Report

Once students have started (or completed) your class time or the assignment, you can view how they did by clicking view report

Here’s what the report looks like:

Did It Work??

This is the ultimate question! Looking at the data in the report and talking to your students are great ways to start answering.

You get several ways to see what students understand with such an activity:

• Can students distinguish closely related terms?

• Can they connect vocabulary in a sequence?

• Can they apply the words to a new example?

• Can they use the language while explaining cause and effect?

• Can they communicate the idea with decreasing levels of support?

That information can guide the next lesson.

Some students may need more work distinguishing weathering from erosion. Others may understand the science and need language supports to express it. A few may be ready to analyze how several processes interact over time.

The same six words can reveal several different learning needs once students are asked to use them.

You're sitting down Sunday night with a stack of proposals from your seventh graders' cafeteria food waste project. It's due tomorrow. You open the first one expecting a finished pitch and get three bullet points and a stock photo of a compost bin. The second one still has “insert data here” in it. By the fifth one, you stop being surprised.

Your students didn't blow the deadline - they turned everything in on time. What they turned in was a first draft wearing a final draft's due date….and better still, if you ask them about their submissions on Monday, most of them will tell you, honestly, that they thought it was done.

Your rubric lists what the project needs to include, but it doesn't teach a twelve-year-old how to look at their own draft and see the distance between what they wrote and what “good” actually looks like. That's a different skill, and most students haven't been handed a way to practice it before the grade lands.

What a fantastic learning opportunity! But one that needs structure to foster the skill of being able to compare your current work to the deliverable requirements.

Artifacts That Would Help Students Reflect Before Submitting a Project:

• A rubric that scores quality after submission isn't the same as a checklist that helps a student see quality before they submit.

• Building a project-specific self-assessment tool from scratch takes real planning time — exactly the kind you don't have in week 5.

• Whatever you hand students has to be phrased the way they actually talk, or they'll skim past it the way they skim past the rubric.

How to Generate Project-specific Checklists and Reflections using AI

Start with Brainstorm Ideas or Generate Interactive

We have a choice here in Colleague AI - an interactive worksheet or producing a checklist and reflection assignment that isn’t interactive and is easier to skip over.

An interactive worksheet requires students to actually complete and submit within Colleague AI.

Producing a Word Doc or Google Sheet of a checklist or reflection assignment is less interactive.

You’ll know what works better for your class, so pick whichever, and if you aren’t sure, we’d recommend an interactive.

Paste in your existing project brief or rubric — the cafeteria food waste proposal, with its four criteria: problem and evidence, proposed solution, feasibility, and presentation. Tell Colleague AI the grade level and that students are about to move from first draft to final submission.

Specify In Your Prompt That You Want a Checklist and Self-reflection

Tell Colleague AI that you want both a checklist for your students to complete as well as a self-reflection assignment that they need to complete before submitting their work.

Colleague AI will create a checklist based on the project information you provided as well as the rubric. It will also create a self-reflection for students to complete based not only on the assignment but also on project-based learning pedagogy and best practices.

Review Your Prompt, Then Generate

It’s always worthwhile to re-read your prompt before clicking “Generate”.

Ensure that you have adequately described the project, that you’ve included any attachments, included the grade level, any applicable standards, etc.

Review The Generated Checklist and Self-reflection

Colleague AI returns a self-assessment checklist built directly from your rubric language, rewritten so a seventh grader reads it as a real question about their own work instead of a grading category.

Problem & Evidence

• I explained the problem with a specific number or example, not just “there's a lot of waste.”

• I named where my evidence came from — a survey, an observation, an article — instead of guessing.

• Someone who's never seen our cafeteria could picture the problem after reading my opening.

Proposed Solution

• My solution directly fixes the problem I described, not food waste in general.

• I explained why I chose this solution over an easier one.

• I said what would have to change for this to actually work — schedule, staff, or money.

Feasibility

• I estimated a real cost or time commitment, even if it's a rough number.

• I named at least one obstacle and how I'd handle it.

• I didn't skip this section because it was the hardest one.

Presentation & Communication

• Someone could understand my proposal without me explaining it out loud.

• I read it once as if I were the principal deciding whether to approve it.

• No placeholder text, no “insert data here,” no unfinished sentences.

Get Smart! Assign This Activity BEFORE The Due Date of the Project

The checklist and self-reflection are designed to develop the skill of being able to compare your submission to the project requirements. The problem is that if students do this last minute, they have no time to remedy any gaps they may identify between their submission and the requirements.

Get smart - assign the checklist and self-reflection as an assignment to complete at least 1 day or class or period prior to the project submission deadline.

This gives students the ability to iterate on their work and learn how to close the gap between their submission and the project - another useful skill!

Try It Before Your Next Project Deadline

If you've got a project due this week, pull up the rubric you're already using. That's the only input Colleague AI needs to build a self-assessment checklist your students will actually read — before you're the one finding the gaps on a Sunday night.

It's 9:47 p.m. Tomorrow you're discussing Chapter 10 of The Giver with a class whose students read at four different grade levels.

Currently, you only have 1 lesson plan and set of discussion questions that you know won’t suffice for the 4 grade-levels you need to accommodate.

If that's tonight, this post is for you.

The Problem With “One Set of Questions”

A single list of comprehension questions for a whole-class novel almost always fails somebody:

• Too literal, and your advanced readers check out by question three.

• Too abstract, and your students who need scaffolding can't get a foothold in the text at all.

• Written once and reused every period, and you're not actually differentiating — you're just hoping the discussion sorts itself out.

Tiering is much more difficult when the whole class reads the same book.

How to Create Tiered Comprehension Questions for a Required Novel

Instead of writing three versions of a question set from scratch, or skipping the differentiation and hoping for the best, here’s how to create scaffolding and tiered comprehension questions using Colleague AI.

Step 1: Choose “Text Scaffolding” and Provide the Required Context

The AI Assistant Claire will likely ask you for:

• the current reading level of your target audience, and how it compares to their grade level? (For example, are they 6th graders reading at a 4th grade level?)
• specific areas of reading or comprehension where your students need more support? (Such as vocabulary, making inferences, understanding text structure, or staying engaged with complex topics?)
• the text that needs scaffolding, or details about its themes, complexity, and intended learning outcomes? (You can paste the text directly, share a link, or describe what you're working with.)

In our case, it’s The Giver, Chapter 10.

Provide information about how many students are reading at which levels, as well as the goal of the lesson or class period and what you want to achieve. If there are applicable standards, include these as well.

Step 2: Specify You Want Tiered Comprehension Questions

In your prompt as you’re talking with Claire, provide instructions that you want tiered comprehension questions.

Step 3: Review the Generated Materials

Review and edit before it goes anywhere near students. The teacher makes the call on what stays, what gets cut, and what gets reworded for a specific kid.