How AI Helped Me Chat With Our Curriculum – Matthew Wemyss

Next academic year, my main role is focused on improving our school’s curriculum. While what we currently have in place is working, we want to elevate it and create something that truly represents who we are as a school now and our aspirations for the future. The main emphasis will be on Key Stage 3, sometimes referred to as the ‘lost’ or ‘wasted’ years.

Firstly, I’m aware that I’m not an expert in every subject. At the start of summer, I refreshed my knowledge on general curriculum design principles by re-reading Mary Myatt’s “Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence” and “Huh” – a book supporting senior leaders in having curriculum conversations with Heads of Department.

Our Curriculum Map

Annually, we ask departments to produce a map of the curriculum split into 6 half-terms, each containing the learning objectives for our subjects. We have two variations of the map: one subject-specific and one providing an overview for each year group (see image below). They are 99% identical – the only difference is the overview has each row representing a different subject, while the subject-specific version has each row representing a year group.

Writing the Prompt

My initial prompt became a “mega prompt” – with multiple layers of questions for the AI to investigate. However, due to token limits, it processed my request but provided only an overview.

I tried several approaches before deciding to break the prompting process into stages:

Overview Prompt

For this prompt to work the curriculum map will need to be attached/uploaded in Claude or ChatGPT+.

You are a curriculum expert.  Ask for the following information before you analyse the curriculum map I have uploaded:

• What year group(s) does the curriculum map cover?
• What curriculum standards is the map aligned to (e.g. UK National Curriculum)?

Once you have those details:

Provide a high-level report on my findings, including strengths, areas for improvement, standards not adequately addressed, and revised objectives.

Give more detailed analysis on aspects such as:

·        Sequencing and pacing

·        Cross-curricular connections

·        Assessments

·        Technology integration

·        Diversity, equity and inclusion

Make recommendations for improving the curriculum map.

It is worth noting that both Claude and Chat GPT+ didn’t need me to provide the year group or curriculum standards – it figured them out. But it did ask to confirm it had identified them correctly, initiating a conversational exchange.

The Curriculum Bot provided an overview of all the areas, outlining strengths and development needs. For comparison, I’ve included the final recommendations from both AIs:

This higher-level overview was really interesting, but I wanted to dig deeper into:

• Sequencing/pacing within subjects
• Alignment of knowledge/skills across subjects
• Vocabulary connections
• Potential cross-curricular projects

Sequencing and Pacing within Subjects Prompt

This prompt took a little bit of work to get the phrasing right:

Now you have analysed the curriculum map please provide specific recommendations for logically sequencing the learning objectives outlined in the curriculum maps for each subject.

Advise the optimal order of topics within each subject area to best scaffold student skills and understanding.

Identifying any learning objectives that need reordering within subjects to improve logical flow and scaffolding of skills.

Pinpointing areas where resequencing objectives between subjects could better align interdisciplinary connections.

Advising on essential knowledge and skills that should be established first in one subject before being reinforced in others.

The feedback was interesting. Claude provided more detailed analysis for the first subject, then gave an overview of the rest. Both AIs offered to answer follow-up questions on specific subjects – the start of a genuine conversation!

Here’s a sample of the feedback:

I felt that Claude gave more information from the prompt than ChatGPT+, as it gave a detailed information for the first subject – but then gave an overview of the rest. However, I wanted to go a little deeper into the conversation and ask for more information:

This was really useful, and gave some insightful feedback:

• In English, the unit on persuasive/argumentative writing could be aligned with the History unit on debate skills and using evidence to support claims. These complementary skills could be taught in the same timeframe.
• The English poetry unit could be paired with studying poets in the historical time periods covered in History (e.g. 17th century poets when learning about colonialism).
• Elements of storytelling in English like narrators, perspective, tone, etc. could reinforce the fiction analysis done in Turkish reading/writing units.
• Learning about measurement, data, and geometry in Maths could be sequenced just prior to the Science units on experiments, graphs, shapes, and spatial relationships.
• The statistics unit in Maths could be paired with the data analysis covered in Geography and Science labs. Teaching data skills together would reinforce them.

Cross-Curricular Connections

Cross-curricular planning is always tricky since I’m not a specialist in every subject, and neither are our Key Stage 3 teachers. Spotting less obvious links is elusive. I ran this prompt twice, specifically asking the AI to use the curriculum map content as a reminder the second time. Here is the cross-curricular prompt:

Using the learning objectives within my curriculum map:

• The next thing I would like is for you to identify key knowledge and skills across subjects that have natural overlaps or that could be aligned
• Suggest specific ways teachers could make interdisciplinary connections and integrate learning between subject areas
• Advise where common themes, concepts, and standards could be coordinated into cross-subject units or projects
• Provide examples of how the curriculum could link subjects together more cohesively

The ChatGPT responses had significantly more detail, seeming to analyse the objectives. Claude gave more surface-level suggestions.

“Create a cross-subject research project on an environmental issue utilising skills from science, English, and geography”

With follow-up questions, both AIs provided useful answers:

And a nice summary for more suggestions for me to explore:

I did ask follow-up questions to look for links between other subjects it had not compared. Both AI’s seemed to focus on the “core” subjects (English, Maths, Science) and humanities and language. The UK state system does have a bias towards the EBACC subjects, so I may have introduced this when “aligning” the bot to that curriculum.

Both AI’s gave good answers with more specific prompting:

Cross-cutting Skills:

This prompt is similar but focuses on practical skills:

Analyse the learning objectives and standards in the curriculum to identify common hands-on, technical skills that overlap across multiple subjects.

For each overlapping practical skill set:

Indicate which subjects share or reinforce those skills in their learning objectives.

Recommend which subject area should teach the skill first to best align to the sequencing of objectives.

Suggest ways teachers of the other subjects can reinforce and build on that initial skill instruction.

Providing a skills alignment map with recommendations for where they are initially taught would help teachers intentionally sequence and integrate instruction around these shared competencies. Please focus your analysis on identifying cross-cutting skills and advising the optimal sequencing of them between subjects.

Again, ChatGPT+ gave more specific detail than Claude, but both responded well to follow-ups:

Academic Vocabulary and Skills

Another important area for me is building up a shared vocabulary. We faced issues last academic year with charts and graphs across the Key Stage 3 curriculum, as all subject taught it but used different key words and phrases:

Analyse the learning objectives for each subject and carryout the following:

• Identify key academic vocabulary words that are common across multiple subjects.
• Identify specific skill areas and the associated keywords or terms related to each area. Then identify key vocabulary words linked to practical skills that are common across multiple subjects.
• Suggest ways teachers could strategically reinforce shared academic vocabulary across disciplines

For this prompt the second instruction took a while to get right. When you run this prompt, I found running the second instruction on its own gave the best results:

Next Steps

Using this approach, I want to explore other areas like developmental appropriateness, assessment suggestions, resources/materials, technology integration, diversity equity and inclusion analysis, and curriculum-linked professional development.

I also want to see if I can make a master document with multiple year groups and Key Stages, so I can look vertically as well.

The last Question

The last step was asking both AIs if I could make their lives easier:

Is there anything I could do to improve the curriculum map document to help you in the future?

Both gave some really good ideas surrounding the structure and formatting that would help them get to grips with document, and support the curriculum review process.

This has been a truly enlightening experience having genuine curriculum discussions with AI. The objective analysis brought outside perspective, highlighting areas for improvement we likely would not have identified ourselves. With the AIs’ help, I feel empowered to lead meaningful changes to strengthen our curriculum’s coherence.

The curriculum maps are now “living” documents, and this human-AI collaboration has enabled me to see things I hadn’t before and take our curriculum to the next level. I’m excited to continue this partnership!