Aug 19, 2026 · 32 min · 10 segments
AI can give teachers something incredibly valuable: more time to focus on children. In this episode of *The Early Years Exchange*, Dr. Jason Lody shares practical ways educators can use AI to support…
Jason LodyHost
Instead of searching websites for an hour, you could simply use an AI tool of choice and type in a prompt.
And a prompt could be something like, create a one-week lesson plan for four-year-olds on community helpers.
Include literacy, math, science, dramatic play, art, sensory exploration, gross motor activities, and open-ended discussion questions aligned with developmentally appropriate practice.
Remember, when you're writing prompts, they need to be clear, they need to be very specific, and they need to be expansive, meaning full of everything that you're looking for so that you get the maximum amount of opportunity in the draft that your AI tool of choice presents back to you.
And if you type in a prompt like that, within seconds, you're going to have a framework, not a script, not a curriculum replacement, a framework, a starting point.
You know your children, you know what excites them, you know what resources you have access to, right? So sometimes the recommended framework that AI provides to you just doesn't align with the materials you have readily available or the resources that are in your community.
So you have to make the modifications to put your touch on the draft that your prompt has created.
You, with your experience and your expertise and your creativity, you bring them to life.
One of the greatest challenges in a preschool once a lesson plan is created is differentiating, right? Meeting children where they are.
Still, some need sorting activities before even getting to patterns, but they're all in your class at the same time.
And that's going to save teachers significant time planning while supporting individualized instruction.
So taking that lesson planning prompt that we just got done talking about for community helpers, for example.
And using that, replacing community helpers with patterns and requesting differentiation techniques and multiple ability activities.
Instead of searching websites for an hour, you could simply use an AI tool of choice and type in a prompt.
And a prompt could be something like, create a one-week lesson plan for four-year-olds on community helpers.
Include literacy, math, science, dramatic play, art, sensory exploration, gross motor activities, and open-ended discussion questions aligned with developmentally appropriate practice.
Remember, when you're writing prompts, they need to be clear, they need to be very specific, and they need to be expansive, meaning full of everything that you're looking for so that you get the maximum amount of opportunity in the draft that your AI tool of choice presents back to you.
And if you type in a prompt like that, within seconds, you're going to have a framework, not a script, not a curriculum replacement, a framework, a starting point.
You know your children, you know what excites them, you know what resources you have access to, right? So sometimes the recommended framework that AI provides to you just doesn't align with the materials you have readily available or the resources that are in your community.
So you have to make the modifications to put your touch on the draft that your prompt has created.
You, with your experience and your expertise and your creativity, you bring them to life.
One of the greatest challenges in a preschool once a lesson plan is created is differentiating, right? Meeting children where they are.
Still, some need sorting activities before even getting to patterns, but they're all in your class at the same time.
And that's going to save teachers significant time planning while supporting individualized instruction.
So taking that lesson planning prompt that we just got done talking about for community helpers, for example.
And using that, replacing community helpers with patterns and requesting differentiation techniques and multiple ability activities.
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