Playbook: Alex for Teachers and Educators

Your reference for using Alex in teaching, curriculum, and student support. Ready-to-run prompts for lesson planning, differentiation, assessment, and parent communication.

What This Guide Is Not

This is not a habit formation guide (see Self-Study Guide for that). This is a teaching toolkit — the specific ways Alex can save you time and enhance your practice, and the prompts that work.

Where to Practice These Prompts

Every prompt in this guide works with any AI assistant — ChatGPT, Claude, GitHub Copilot, Gemini, or whatever tool you prefer. The prompts are the skill; the tool is just where you type them. Pick the one you’re comfortable with and start today.

For an integrated experience, the Alex VS Code extension (free) was purpose-built for this workshop. It understands education context, lets you save effective prompts with /saveinsight, and brings your playbook and practice exercises into one workspace. VS Code is a free editor that takes minutes to set up, even if you’ve never used it before.

You don’t need a specific tool to benefit. You need the habit of reaching for AI when the work is genuinely hard — not just when it’s repetitive.

Core Principle for Educators

Teaching is about understanding where students are and meeting them there. Alex’s highest value is reducing the time you spend on tasks that don’t require your expertise — so you have more energy for the work that does.

The key pattern: be specific about your students. Grade level, prior knowledge, learning differences, class dynamics. The more context Alex has about your actual classroom, the more useful the output.

The Seven Use Cases

1. Lesson Planning

When to use: Designing instruction for a concept, unit, or skill.

Prompt pattern:

Help me plan a lesson:

Subject: [content area]
Grade level: [specific grade or range]
Topic: [what you're teaching]
Standards: [relevant standards if applicable]
Time: [class period length]
Prior knowledge: [what students already know]

Create a lesson plan that includes:
1. Learning objective (clear, measurable)
2. Hook / engagement activity
3. Direct instruction sequence
4. Guided practice
5. Independent practice
6. Formative assessment check
7. Closure / synthesis

Follow-up prompts:

Add differentiation for students who need more support.

Add extension for students who need more challenge.

This is too much for one period. What would you cut?

Try this now: You teach 8th grade social studies. Your next unit is on the Civil Rights Movement. You have students reading at 4th through 10th grade levels, three students with IEPs, and 47 minutes per class period. Paste those constraints into the lesson planning prompt and ask for a differentiated lesson arc. The output will suggest tiered activities and primary source selections — you adapt them based on what you know about your students.

2. Differentiated Materials

When to use: Adapting content for different learners. Meeting IEP accommodations. Challenging advanced students.

Prompt pattern:

Help me differentiate this material:

Original content:
[paste the text, problem set, or activity]

Grade level: [intended level]
Students who need adaptation:
- [describe the students and their needs]

Create:
1. A simplified version (same concept, reduced complexity)
2. A scaffolded version (supports for struggling learners)
3. An extended version (deeper challenge for advanced learners)
4. Visual or graphic organizer version

Follow-up prompts:

A student with [specific learning difference] is struggling. What additional supports would help?

Create a word bank / sentence starters for ELL students.

Make this accessible for a student reading 2 grades below level.

3. Assessment and Rubric Design

When to use: Creating formative and summative assessments. Designing clear rubrics.

Prompt pattern:

Help me create an assessment:

Topic: [what you're assessing]
Type: [formative / summative / diagnostic]
Format: [quiz / project / essay / presentation / performance task]
Standards: [what you're measuring]
Time: [how long students have]

Create:
1. Clear directions
2. Assessment items aligned to standards
3. A rubric with specific criteria and levels
4. Common misconceptions to watch for
5. Options for student choice if appropriate

Follow-up prompts:

Create an answer key with explanations.

Add a self-assessment checklist for students.

What feedback comments would help a student at each rubric level?

4. Feedback and Comments

When to use: Providing meaningful feedback on student work at scale.

Prompt pattern:

Help me write feedback on student work:

Assignment: [what students were asked to do]
This student's work: [summarize or paste key excerpts]
Strengths: [what they did well]
Areas for growth: [where they need to improve]
Tone: [encouraging / direct / growth-focused]

Write feedback that:
1. Starts with a specific strength
2. Identifies the most important area for growth
3. Provides a concrete next step
4. Uses student-friendly language for grade [X]
5. Stays under [X] sentences

Follow-up prompts:

This student is easily discouraged. Make it more supportive while still honest.

Write 5 variations of this feedback for different students with similar issues.

Create targeted praise comments I can use for [specific skill].

5. Parent Communication

When to use: Emails, conference prep, progress updates, behavior communications.

Prompt pattern:

Help me communicate with a parent:

Context: [what's happening]
Student situation: [academic / behavioral / positive update]
Parent relationship: [new / established / challenging]
Goal: [what you want to accomplish]
Tone: [professional / warm / concerned / celebratory]

Write a [email / phone script / conference talking points] that:
1. Opens with connection
2. States the situation clearly
3. Focuses on student growth
4. Invites partnership
5. Proposes next steps

Follow-up prompts:

The parent might get defensive. How do I frame this more carefully?

I need to document this conversation. What should my notes include?

Write a follow-up email after a conference.

6. Classroom Activities and Engagement

When to use: Creating engaging activities, discussion prompts, group work structures.

Prompt pattern:

Help me design an engaging activity:

Topic: [what you're teaching]
Goal: [what students should learn or practice]
Class size: [number of students]
Time: [how long you have]
Energy level: [need to activate / need to focus / review]

Create an activity that:
1. Gets all students participating (not just volunteers)
2. Has clear instructions and structure
3. Includes built-in accountability
4. Has a clear debrief or synthesis moment
5. Can be adapted if time runs short

Follow-up prompts:

Make this work for small groups of 3-4 students.

Add a movement component — students have been sitting too long.

What discussion questions would deepen the thinking after this activity?

7. Curriculum Mapping and Unit Design

When to use: Planning a unit, sequencing instruction, aligning to standards.

Prompt pattern:

Help me design a unit:

Subject: [content area]
Unit topic: [the big idea]
Duration: [number of weeks / class periods]
Standards to cover: [list them]
Prior units: [what students have already learned]
Culminating assessment: [how you'll measure success]

Create a unit outline with:
1. Essential questions that drive inquiry
2. Lesson sequence with key concepts in order
3. Formative assessment checkpoints
4. Key vocabulary and scaffolds
5. Connection to student interests or real world

Follow-up prompts:

Where can I integrate cross-curricular connections?

I have a field trip / guest speaker. How do I build it in?

What prerequisite skills should I pre-assess?

Your AI toolkit: These prompts work in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini — and in the Alex VS Code extension, which was designed around them. Start with whatever you have. The skill transfers across all of them.

What Great Looks Like

After consistent use, you should notice: less time on planning with more time on teaching, better differentiated materials without starting from scratch, faster and more specific feedback at scale, and clearer communication with parents. The goal isn’t for Alex to teach your students — it’s for Alex to give you time back for the work only you can do.

Practice Plan

Month 2–3

Shift from guided exercises to independent workflows — build templates, integrate AI into your real projects, and create reusable prompt libraries for repeating tasks.

Track Your Growth

/saveinsight Lesson planning: [description]

/saveinsight Differentiation strategies: [description]

Continue your practice: Self-Study Guide has weekly challenges to keep building your skills after the workshop ends.

Academic Integrity

Be thoughtful about how AI use intersects with your classroom expectations:

• Model appropriate AI use for students
• Consider how you’ll handle student AI use on assignments
• Be transparent with colleagues about your own AI use
• Focus AI assistance on your teacher work, not on replacing student learning

Your expertise is what makes the learning happen.