Computer Skills
Beginner
60 mins
Teacher/Student led
Learning Goals
Learning Outcomes
+80 XP
What you need:
Chromebook/Laptop/PC or iPad/Tablet

Your AI Copilot — Prompting AI to Do Better Work

Learn to use AI assistants effectively as a Drafter, Critic, and Explainer on your own work. Master prompt patterns that get genuine results: being specific, giving a role, showing examples, and iterating. Practise on your Something Real project.

Teacher Class Feed

Load previous activity

    1 - Introduction ~5 mins

    Illustration for Introduction

    Welcome

    Today you learn how to drive an AI assistant. Assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini can genuinely speed up real work (drafting an opening line, critiquing a draft, explaining a concept you can't quite teach back), but only if you prompt them well and decide for yourself what to keep.

    By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

    • Use an AI assistant in three useful modes: Drafter, Critic, and Explainer
    • Write prompts that get specific, useful output instead of generic filler
    • Decide what to keep, change, or reject from an AI response, and explain why
    • Recognise when AI help crosses into academic dishonesty
    • Apply the same patterns on ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or Gemini, whichever your school supports

    Warm-up

    Think for 30 seconds: the last time you asked an AI assistant for help with something real, was the first answer actually useful, or did you have to rewrite your prompt to get anything you could use? What did you change the second time?

    👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

    +5 XP

    2 - Key Concepts ~5 mins

    AI assistants aren't magic. They're good at some specific things and bad at others. The five ideas below are what separate a wasted 10 minutes from a useful one.

    Read this first: the bold sentence in each row is the one-line takeaway. If you only remember five sentences from this lesson, make them those five.
    ConceptWhy it mattersExample
    Drafter mode — ask AI for a first version that you will then editA starter draft is always easier to improve than a blank page. Editing someone else's attempt also teaches you what "good" looks like.Ask AI to draft three alternative one-sentence hooks for a pitch about a TY bake sale to help fund the Galway trip
    Critic mode — paste your own work and ask AI to find specific weaknessesYou spot your own mistakes more easily when someone names them out loud. AI is a patient, free critic available at midnight before a deadline.Paste a paragraph you wrote yourself and ask AI to name three sentences that are unclear and say what would confuse a parent reading them
    Explainer mode — ask AI to explain a concept at the exact level you needIf you can teach something back in two sentences, you actually understand it. That is the difference between freezing and answering confidently when someone asks you about it.Ask AI to explain "break-even point" at Junior Cert business level, distinguishing fixed costs (for example, table hire) from variable costs (ingredients), with a worked euro example
    Prompt specificity — vague prompts give vague output; specific prompts with a role, an example, and real material give usable outputThe gap between "help me with my pitch" and a draft you can edit is about 30 extra words in the prompt."Help me with my pitch" produces generic waffle. "Act as a school communications coach. Rewrite this opening in 25 words for my year head: [paste sentence]" produces something usable.
    The honesty line — AI as support is fine; AI doing the work you were asked to do yourself is dishonestyCritique, explanation, and draft-to-edit are support. Submitting AI output as your own is cheating. The rule of thumb: if the point of the task is that you learn the skill, AI can't do it for you.Using AI to critique your own draft is support. Pasting an assignment brief and submitting the AI's answer unchanged is dishonesty.

    👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

    +10 XP

    3 - Step-by-step Task — Three Modes, One Project ~17 mins

    You'll take one rough pitch sentence through all three AI modes (Drafter, Critic, and Explainer) using a sample TY bake sale for the Galway trip as the worked example. Then in the Portfolio Build you'll apply the same three modes to a piece of your own work.

    +15 XP

    4 - Common Issues ~3 mins

    Common Issues

    Prompting isn't a magic formula. Here's what to do when it isn't working.

    IssueSolution
    The AI gave me generic waffle that doesn't helpYour prompt was probably too vague. Add a role ("act as a …"), the real material (paste it in), and a constraint (word count, audience, level). Don't restart; refine the prompt you just sent by adding the missing piece.
    The AI is confidently stating a fact that sounds wrongAI hallucinates. Every factual claim you plan to use in your work must be checked against another source. If you can't check it, don't use it.
    The explanation is still too confusing to teach back in two sentencesAsk one narrow follow-up targeting the exact part that confused you, for example, "I didn't get [X]; can you explain that bit with a different example?" Don't ask for the whole thing again from scratch; iterate.
    AI is refusing to help or showing a warningYou may have framed the request in a way the tool reads as sensitive. Rephrase with the purpose clear (school work), the audience clear (my year head, my class), and the constraint clear (one paragraph, Junior Cert level).
    I typed the prompt but the AI is still answering as if the placeholder was part of my questionScroll back and check you deleted the [paste your chosen sentence] text (brackets and all) and replaced it with your own sentence. If not, send a new message: "Ignore my last message. Here is the real sentence: …" and paste your sentence cleanly.
    +10 XP

    5 - Portfolio Build — AI Workbench ~20 mins

    Independent Practice

    Your goal: Practise using an AI assistant in all three modes on a piece of your own work, so by the end of the lesson you know which parts of your work AI can genuinely help with, and where you still have to do the thinking yourself.
    Time: ~20 minutes
    Task: Pick a piece of your own work, such as a TY project, an essay or a presentation you are working on. Create a new document called AI Workbench where your class keeps its work, and work through three mini-cases on your piece: Drafter (ask AI to draft a one-sentence opening for it), Critic (paste in a paragraph you wrote and ask for specific criticism), and Explainer (pick a concept from it that you can't teach back in two sentences). Build the four-column template below in your document and fill a row for each case, so you don't have to design the page from scratch. Close the page with one honest line of the form "AI helped me most with X; AI was least useful for Y".

    How to find your Explainer concept: scan your piece of work and look for a word you wrote down but would struggle to explain to a parent in 10 seconds. If nothing jumps out, try one of these starters: break-even point, target audience, opportunity cost, margin, or any formula you copied from a classmate without fully understanding.

    If time is tight: complete the Drafter and Critic rows in class, because those are the most useful, and finish the Explainer row at home. A well-documented two rows beats three rushed ones.

    ModePrompt you sentAI output (summary is fine)Kept / Changed / Rejected — and why (one line)
    Drafter………
    Critic………
    Explainerfirst prompt + your follow-up…your own two-sentence teach-back
    Success criteria:
    • Your AI Workbench has at least two rows of the template filled in (three if time allows), each showing the prompt, the AI output, and what you kept, changed, or rejected, so a reader can see how you drove the AI rather than just copied it
    • The Critic row names at least one criticism you accepted and one you rejected, each with a one-line reason for the call you made
    • If completed: the Explainer row shows your first prompt, at least one narrower follow-up question, and your own two-sentence teach-back of the concept
    • The page closes with one honest line of the form "AI helped me most with X; AI was least useful for Y"
    +15 XP
    123learn · Online learning platform

    Unlock the full learning experience

    You're previewing this lesson. Get full access to this lesson and hundreds more — each one ready to teach, with interactive activities, printable resources and pupil progress tracking built in.

    Hundreds of curriculum-aligned lessons
    Interactive activities in every lesson
    Printable resources & progress tracking
    Get started
    Copyright Notice
    This lesson is copyright of Coding Ireland 2017 - 2026. Unauthorised use, copying or distribution is not allowed.
    🍪 Our website uses cookies to make your browsing experience better. By using our website you agree to our use of cookies. Learn more