Reading Time: 4 minutes (725 words)
Target Audience: Upper Elementary, Middle, and High School Teachers
A Backstory
Last spring, my eighth-grade son asked me to sit down and help him with a Shark Tank project for his science class by supporting two tasks: reading his work to make sure it didn’t sound like AI wrote it and finding some images to add to each slide.
The project was definitely eighth-grade good (translation: not written by AI), but he struggled with visuals. None of the free images without copyright restrictions fit his needs or matched what he was envisioning: a shark (to fit the Shark Tank theme) circling an island engulfed in forest fire flames (the issue his project was designed to address). After several minutes of struggling, I suggested we turn to turn to AI. Thus began a mission of vision and revision.
Behind the Scenes
We started with a simple prompt: Create an image of a Great White Shark taking a bite out of a forest fire. The resulting image was decent, but not to the satisfaction of a picky 14-year-old. So we began making tweaks and shifts to our request, each time becoming a little more clear and precise in our language. By the time he felt the project was complete, I had arrived at the realization that AI is a fantastic partner for teaching the revision process, not just a shortcut to a product.
Try This:
Using AI as a revision tool is not only a fun way to refine language skills, it can also be a great exercise to pair with publishing as kids try to generate images to complement their polished writing pieces. To implement this in a classroom, here’s a possible workflow:
- Have students decide what image they want to create and jot their idea on a sticky note or describe it to a partner.
- Show students how to prompt a student-friendly and safe AI tool to generate the first draft of their image.
- Pause and reflect: Does this image match what I want? What needs to change? How can I put that change into words?
- Revise the prompt to be more specific, descriptive, and precise, and try again.
- Repeat this process until the image reaches the desired outcome.
The Impact
This is a fun, engaging way to get students to practice their revision skills with immediate feedback. It shifts the use of AI from being product-focused to becoming more process-oriented. Writers are authentically put in a position where they have to weigh their words carefully and consider how choices they make influence the image that is created.
AI Acknowledgement and Analog Alternatives
There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding AI and its impacts on society, education, and the environment right now. As educators and members of society, we are just dipping our toes into what AI can do, should do, and definitely should not do. If your district does not have appropriate AI tools or you aren’t comfortable trying them out with kids, here are some ways to shift to an analog approach:
- Have kids work in a small group of 3-4, one student giving directions while the others sketch out of sight. Reveal the images after a few minutes of drawing and compare how they are the same/different. Discuss what the prompting student might have said to make the work more detailed or similar and, if time permits, have kids try adding or changing their drawings.
- Make this a fun whole-class weekly warm-up. Model (or choose one student) to issue a set of directions to the class at the beginning of the week to draw or create something. Based on what kids do the first day, model or have the student revise the prompt for the second day. Repeat this across a few days to illustrate how to get more specific and precise with language.
- Put the activity in reverse: show an image to the class and have students draft and revise prompts that might generate the picture. Go through several rounds of revision to help them become more specific.
The Bottom Line
Giving kids the opportunity to engage in authentic revision matters, and pairing this work with tech tools and visual imagery takes it to a whole new level. By tapping into precise language and creative thinking, students can enhance their writing skills and take ownership of the revision process.
Media in This Post:
- Featured image was created with Canva templates.
- Screenshots were taken of Google Gemini prompts and image generated on March 31, 2026.
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Sarah,
There is NO uncertainty about AI and what it does to the environment and to cognitive development. There is NO PLACE for AI in education, including revision. Period. AI is robbing students of important cognitive development, and it is destroying the planet. Moreover, it robs from creators, and it further marginalizes already repressed people.
My intention in creating this post was to nudge teachers who are embracing AI in ways that are content-focused to consider using these tools in a way that pushes kids to do their own thinking. As a team, the TWT co-authors continue to discuss our own use of these tools and individual stances (this resource—https://twowritingteachers.org/twt-approach-to-ai/ —was actually added to the site recently to be transparent with our readers).
There’s an article in the NYT today about plummeting reading scores. AI is contributing to that decline and has been for three years now. When teachers jumped on the cell phones in the classroom bandwagon, there were all kinds of promises about how kids would benefit. The opposite happened. Schools are now abandoning the 1:1 chrome book policies and returning to carts because the ubiquity of chromebooks has a detrimental effect on student learning. Honestly, I see no valid reason for students or teachers using AI. I’ve read several books about AI, beginning with Atlas of AI. Now we’re learning that Anthropic says AI has the potential to destroy humankind. The recent glacial collapse in Nepal was caused by climate change. AI is burning up the planet and in some states destroying communities. Here in the west we understand how precious water is. AI data centers are thirsty beasts, yet the desert is exactly where companies are building data centers, often w/ secret deals citizens don’t know about. Educators have to ask themselves if they are complicit in all of this. I stand behind my comment. There is no valid reason for AI to be part of education. There are countries that are banning its use by both teachers and students. That should be the policy in the U.S.