👋
Year 8 • Lesson 4

Hello AI

Meet your AI assistant — and its limits

AI is the most powerful tool of your generation. Learning to use it wisely is a superpower.

🎯 Learning Objectives

  • Explain what generative AI is and how it produces responses
  • Use an AI tool safely without entering personal information
  • Identify at least two limitations of AI responses

📚 Key Vocabulary

Generative AI
AI that creates new text, images or code by predicting likely next words/pixels
Prompt
The instruction or question you give to an AI
Hallucination
When AI confidently states something false
Training data
The massive dataset of text the AI learned from
Privacy
Never enter personal details, passwords or sensitive info into AI tools

⏱️ Lesson Timing (50 mins)

🪝
Hook
5 mins

Teacher asks an AI a question live — one where it gets something confidently wrong (e.g. a local fact). Class erupts. "This is your new tool. Let's learn to use it properly."

👨‍🏫
Teach
12 mins
  • What generative AI is: predicting likely next words from training data
  • ChatGPT, Copilot, Copilot — same idea, different companies
  • What AI is good at: brainstorming, drafting, explaining, checking work
  • What AI is bad at: facts, maths, current events, personal advice
  • Safety rules: NO real name, school name, passwords, personal problems
  • Academic integrity: AI assistance must be declared
🛠️
Create
38 mins

Structured exploration via the Teacher AI Station (Year 8 students are under 13, so AI is teacher-mediated — students write prompts and submit them; the teacher runs the class's prompts through the AI and returns the responses to evaluate). Four mini-challenges, written up in the "AI Log" (template provided): (1) Write a prompt asking it to explain a topic they find confusing in school — rate the returned explanation 1-5. (2) Ask it to write a poem about their hobby — then edit the returned poem to make it actually theirs. (3) Ask a local fact they know the answer to — catch it if the response is wrong. (4) Ask it to help plan a birthday party — note what's useful and what's wrong. Students submit prompts through the lesson assignment and never use a live AI directly.

Tools:
Teacher AI Station (submission)AI Log (Word Online)
📢
Share
5 mins

Share the best "AI got it wrong" moment. Build a class list of things AI is bad at.

🔧 Tools & Resources

🤖 AI Angle

This IS the AI lesson — the foundation for all future AI work. Because Year 8 students are under 13, every interaction is teacher-mediated: students write prompts, the teacher runs them through the AI, and students evaluate the responses. You learn everything about using AI without ever using a live AI service yourself.

📝 Evidence of Learning

Completed AI Log with 4 mini-challenges and honest evaluations

📚 Homework

Plan a prompt you would use to help you revise for one upcoming test. Write an "AI use statement": what would you ask, what might be useful, what would you need to check or change?

⏱️ 20 mins

♿ Differentiation

Support (for students who need help)

Pre-written prompts on a card — students just need to run them and evaluate

Extension (for advanced learners)

Research how a large language model works. Draw a diagram explaining it to a Year 7 student.

👨‍🏫 Teacher Notes

Year 8 students are under 13 and must NOT use live AI tools directly. This lesson uses the Teacher AI Station: create an "AI Task" assignment for your class (Teacher dashboard → class → New assignment), students submit their prompts, and you batch-run them through the AI with "Run all pending through AI". You may also demonstrate AI live on the projector. Do not skip the safety rules — they matter.