Working with AI: Foundations for Teachers

What every teacher must know about working with AI

How to responsibly judge and use AI, in the work you already do. Thirteen self-paced lessons: how to brief it, how to catch what it invents, and what may never go in the box.

Thirteen lessons · Works with any AI assistant

See the thirteen lessons ↓ What is included

Why teachers take it

The briefing you already do, several times a week

When you ask a teaching assistant for a word mat for tomorrow's lesson, you say which class it is for, what it must cover, what to leave out, and you read it before it is photocopied. That is a brief, and you write several a week.

An AI assistant needs the same brief, and one thing more. It has read a great deal and knows nothing about your class, so with no brief it produces a confident word mat for a class that does not exist. Your judgement is what makes it usable.

Thirteen lessons practise that judgement on your own work: a briefing method, a checking routine and a clear list of what may go into an AI tool.

The journey

Thirteen lessons in three parts

Part one explains what an AI assistant is: how it produces an answer, the four kinds of AI already in your school, and what it costs. Part two is the working part: how to brief it, which tasks to hand it, how to turn a first draft into something usable, how to give it your own materials, and how to check what comes back. Part three is what stays with you: what never goes into a chat box, whose work the result is, what to do when students use it, the decisions that stay yours, and how to judge a new tool.

Part one · What an AI assistant is

Lesson 1What the machine is doing Prediction, training data, and why a confident wrong answer is the ordinary case rather than a fault.

Lesson 2The four families, and what AI literacy means Chat, recommendation, classification, action. Three of the four are already in your school, and one of them writes your reports.

Lesson 3What it costs Electricity, water, data and labour. Then the cost closer to home: what heavy use does to your own subject thinking.

Part two · Working with it

Lesson 4Giving it the task Task, context, audience, constraints. The difference between a request and a brief, shown in four subjects at once.

Lesson 5The work worth handing over One afternoon's pile of work, four teachers, four subjects, one task each. What a good handover looks like when the work is really yours.

Lesson 6First draft to usable Steering a draft that is nearly right, asking it to criticise its own work, and knowing the moment to stop and write it yourself.

Lesson 7Your own materials as context Your scheme, your rubric, last year's resource. What you can hand it to work from, and what you take out first.

Lesson 8Checking Invented citations, arithmetic errors, last year's facts. A short checking routine.

Part three · What stays with you

Lesson 9What you may put in The categories that never go into a chat box, and why a personal account changes nothing about that.

Lesson 10Whose voice, whose work Who appears in your generated examples and who is missing, then copyright, licensing, and the name at the bottom of the sheet.

Lesson 11When the students have it too Acknowledgement, malpractice and the one line on the task sheet. Why a detector score is never evidence, and how to design work that AI makes better rather than emptier.

Lesson 12Where the human stays Judging a child, safeguarding, pastoral calls, references. The list that never leaves your desk, and how to hold the line when you are tired.

Lesson 13Tools that act, and judging a new one The difference between drafting an email and sending it, what a tool can be talked into by the text it reads, and seven questions for whatever arrives next year.

Consolidation

Page 14The quiz Twenty-one questions across the thirteen lessons. Eighty per cent clears the way to your certificate.

Page 15Your certificate Add your name and generate your personalised certificate of completion.

Woven through, lesson by lesson

Four things every lesson builds

Each theme is practised through planning, materials, assessment and communication with parents.

Judgement

Every lesson's unit of work is a decision: what to hand over, what to check, what never goes in, what stays yours. The prompts age within months; the judgement does not.

All thirteen lessons

Four teachers, four subjects

A Year 3 class teacher, a secondary maths teacher, a languages teacher and a PE teacher. Lesson 5 puts the same task through all four, so what carries between subjects is shown rather than asserted.

Threaded, with Lesson 5 as the pivot

Checking as a habit

Fabricated citations, arithmetic errors, last year's facts. A short checking routine, and a higher bar for anything that reaches a child or a parent.

Lesson 8, used again in 6, 7 and 10

The lines that do not move

What may go into a chat box, whose work it is, and the decisions a tool can never be handed: safeguarding, assessment of a child, a reference, a pastoral call.

Lessons 9, 10, 11, 12

Every exchange written out in full.

Every lesson has the same rhythm: what we are about to do, the idea behind it, a walkthrough of a real exchange, the same point in four classrooms, something to practise on your own work, and what changed.

Four teachers travel with you. Maja teaches Year 3 and therefore teaches everything. Tomás teaches secondary maths, Aisha French and Spanish, and Greg PE, so nothing in the course depends on essays. In Lesson 5 all four hand over the same task in the same hour after the last bell, so you can see what transfers between subjects.

Every exchange is written out in full, so you can take the course with any assistant. The final lesson produces a one-page record of your own AI practice for your headteacher.

What you get

Thirteen self-paced lessons

Works with any AI assistant

Working with AI: Foundations for Teachers

How to responsibly judge and use AI, written to hold up whichever assistant your school ends up with.

Thirteen lessons with practice on your own work
Four teachers across four subjects, handing over the same task in the same hour so the transfer is visible
A briefing method, a checking routine, and seven questions for whatever tool arrives next year
Your one-page working agreement, drafted in the final lesson: the thing you hand your head
The twenty-one-question quiz and your personalised certificate of completion
Access by personal link, with no separate course account or password

Also for teachers: Claude Foundations for Teachers, how to set up your Claude safely from the first chat to the first agent. Both are on the training page.

Secure checkout by Stripe. The total, including any tax, is shown before you pay. VAT invoice included. Sold under the Working with AI: Foundations for Teachers Licence, which you accept at checkout. The only thing we store about you is the email your access link goes to. Whole-staff access is arranged school by school: ask us.

Before you decide

The practical questions

Which AI tool do I need for this?

None. Every exchange in the course is written out in full, so it reads the same whichever assistant you use, and nothing depends on a tool your school has not chosen yet. When you do want command of one specific tool, that is the Claude course.

Does this cover teaching AI to students in lessons?

The course is about your own professional work: planning, materials, marking, reports, and the judgement each of those needs. Lesson 11 covers where a student's work meets your assessment. Classroom AI-literacy lessons to teach are a separate thing, and they live in the resource library.

I have used AI for a while. Is it too basic?

It is about briefing, checking and the lines that do not move, practised under real teaching constraints: a late evening, a class that has not met a topic, a parent who will read the letter.

Which countries does the legal side apply to?

The data protection material is written around the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR, with the EU AI Act named where educational uses reach its high-risk category. The principles carry further than the citations do, and the citations are exact so you can check them.

What do I need before I start?

You need a computer and an email address. The course assumes no prior AI experience or particular subject knowledge. Technical terms are explained when first used.

How is the course delivered, and for how long?

Your personal access link arrives by email after payment and opens the course in a browser. Access has no expiry, and updates are included for as long as the course exists.

How does this relate to the Claude course?

They are two separate courses and each stands alone. This one is the judgement that carries across every tool, with no tool required. Claude Foundations is command of one specific tool, configured safely, down to the toggles and the connectors. Buy either, or both.