🎛️
Year 9 • Lesson 2

Prompt Engineering Masterclass

Advanced techniques for expert results

Prompt engineering is already a paid career. You're learning it now.

🎯 Learning Objectives

  • Use role prompting, chain-of-thought and few-shot techniques
  • Build a multi-turn conversation that produces a complex output
  • Evaluate the quality of an AI output using a structured rubric

📚 Key Vocabulary

Role prompting
Asking AI to behave as a specific expert or character
Chain-of-thought
Asking AI to show its reasoning step-by-step ("think this through...")"
Few-shot prompting
Giving 2-3 examples of the output you want before asking for yours
System prompt
Instructions that set AI's behaviour for the whole conversation
Iteration
Improving through multiple refinement rounds

⏱️ Lesson Timing (50 mins)

🪝
Hook
5 mins

Show the average job listing for "AI Prompt Engineer" — £60-120k salary. "This job didn't exist 3 years ago. Today you'll start learning it."

👨‍🏫
Teach
12 mins
  • Review RCTF (Year 8) — now going deeper
  • Role prompting: "You are a data scientist reviewing this analysis..."
  • Chain-of-thought: "Think through this step by step before answering"
  • Few-shot: show 2 examples of the format you want, then ask for yours
  • Negative prompting: "Don't use jargon. Don't make assumptions about..."
  • Conversation design: each message builds on the last
  • When to start fresh vs. continue a conversation
🛠️
Create
38 mins

Masterclass challenge — 3 advanced tasks: (1) Use role prompting to get a genuinely expert-level explanation of a topic they're studying (cross-subject). (2) Use chain-of-thought to solve a logic puzzle step by step. (3) Use few-shot to get AI to write in their own writing style (give it 3 examples of their writing, then ask it to continue in the same style). Evaluate each output using the "output quality rubric" provided. Record all prompts and outputs.

Tools:
Microsoft CopilotAI Log (continued)
📢
Share
5 mins

Share the most impressive result. Class critiques: is it genuinely good, or does it just look impressive?

🔧 Tools & Resources

🤖 AI Angle

Core AI skills lesson — this will change how students use AI in every subject.

📝 Evidence of Learning

Advanced prompt log with 3 techniques demonstrated and outputs evaluated

📚 Homework

Use advanced prompting to help with something real in your life. Document the conversation. Write: what technique worked best and why.

⏱️ 20 mins

♿ Differentiation

Support (for students who need help)

Prompt templates pre-written — students modify one element at a time

Extension (for advanced learners)

Research "prompt injection attacks" — how can malicious prompts hijack AI systems? Write a short security brief.