Tools for Demonstration and Feedback: Leveraging AI for Writing Miniseries

AI tools are exploding in the education world, and when used strategically they can be exceptionally effective and efficient in supporting writing. Among countless other potential uses, AI tools help teachers build demonstration texts and draft feedback for students.

Catch Up Quick: Last Wednesday, Leah kicked off our three-part miniseries on AI tools that maximize impact with a focus on preparing for a unit. Next Wednesday, Melanie will immerse us in tools that teachers can use to scaffold student writing. Today’s post focuses on resources for providing demonstration texts and feedback to students during the writing process.

Why It Matters: If I ask teachers anywhere to name one thing that’s missing from teaching, most likely time will be high on the list. AI tools for demonstration and feedback can help maximize teacher time and impact by efficiently responding to student needs, adapting to varying levels of ability within a single classroom, and targeting specific writing skills. 

Using AI for Demonstration Texts: A demonstration text is a piece of writing used in front of and with students to teach a specific skill. When prompting AI to be a collaborator in creating a demonstration text, create your initial text by being clear about each of these variables:

• Define the role of the AI tool: You are a 4th-grade student…
• The specific genre and focus of the writing: …writing an opinion essay about why people should adopt stray dogs… 
• The desired structure and/or length of the writing: …that is organized into 5 paragraphs and is no longer than 600 words.

After creating the initial demonstration text, use it with students to revise the prompt to include a focused teaching point for revision: Revise to include a quote in one of the body paragraphs.

Numerous AI tools will do this work well (and more are launching by the week). At the time of this post, ChatGPT (click here to get started) and Diffit (click here to get started) are both great places to start. As new tools launch, be on the lookout for the accuracy of the information in the text AI generates, how closely the resource follows your prompts, and whether the tool offers the opportunity to revise the text by refining your prompt.

Using AI To Craft Feedback: Feedback is critical throughout the writing process, not just at the end as a part of assigning scores or grades. However, even on my most efficient conferring days, I’ve found it difficult to provide direct, explicit feedback to more than a handful of my writers. AI tools can support me—and my students—in this work by responding to student writing in ways that is clear, explicit, and timely. 

When asking an AI tool to give feedback, it’s important to include:

• The type of feedback you’re seeking (i.e., glows and grows)
• Specific aspects of the writing you want to target (i.e., structure, word choice, elaboration, etc.)

I asked Brisk, a Chrome extension, to provide “glows and grows” on the organization of this post. I specified that I wanted the feedback based on an 8th-grade writing level and that it should not exceed 50 words. It generated specific, targeted feedback (pictured on the right) to help with my revision process.

Similar to demonstration texts, the variety and accessibility of resources that provide feedback using AI is growing quickly. When selecting a tool to use, make sure to consider:

• The AI’s ability to hone in on specific skills;
• Whether it can adapt to different ages and reading abilities;
• If it can be connected to a specific rubric or learning progression;
• And, most importantly, how student privacy is protected (if the tool is “reading” student writing, how is it collecting and using student data?).

A Few Words of Caution: AI tools are incredible teaching assistants. They can create demonstration texts tailored to student interests and provide more frequent feedback to students. However, AI should not replace the authentic, expert demonstration teaching and feedback that we as teachers provide to children. It is essential to make sure students know that human eyes are reading their writing and supporting their growth regularly. AI can maximize time and impact, but it is human intelligence that drives the writing workshop.

The Bottom Line: When it comes to writing, AI tools can make our use of demonstration texts and feedback more streamlined, timely, and impactful for our students. Keep in mind that the rate of change in the availability and accessibility of tools is rapid, so it’s beneficial to stay up-to-date and to be open to new resources as they emerge.