The other day I asked three AI vendors, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, to produce a drill and practice routine including assessments to teach punctuation rules to 5th thru 8th grade students. The product needed to be progressive by assessing students’ initial knowledge and use of punctuation, prescribing drill and practice based on assessment data, assessing change in student knowledge and application, and prescribing subsequent drill and practice until each student achieved 90% or better on an assessment. I asked each AI to apply Vygotsky’s zone of proximal learning theory to this request.
Voila! I have three valid and workable drill and practice routines. These routines are pedagogically sound and will cause measurable student learning. However, something is missing.
I then asked each AI to prepare a rationale explaining to children why punctuation rules are important for them to know and use in their written communications.
Voila, again! But each AI product read like dry toast without any butter or preserves.
What do we know?
If “a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down,” providing students with meaning and context makes a lesson learnable. We have many homilies for this. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” seems most apt. AI can present a student with a sound strategy for learning, but it comes up short in providing the necessary meaningful context for learning that a teacher can provide. AI is masterful in the science of teaching but fails in the art of teaching.
Instructional theory tells us that motivation to learn is essential for learning to succeed. Additionally, when a child understands purpose, functionality, and the future value of what they learn, they are motivated to engage with instruction. Thank you, Madeline Hunter.
As I read and reread the AI explanation in my student-like mind, I find no spark, no sense of urgency in engaging in what AI can teach me. The explanations are clearly written; personal and insightful connections are the issue. As I read these routines, I imagine AI is a robot standing in front of the classroom teaching me the rules and applications of punctuation. I imagine a school-casual-dressed humanoid speaking with good midwestern diction. I imagine taking notes and sketching an organizer of the quiz-drill and practice-quiz scenario and still I am not motivated to engage beyond knowing this is a required school assignment.
What to do.
I am missing human connection; a teacher who knows me and my learning needs, strengths and deficits and can make me see “me” in the assignment. Teachers do this all the time. This is what I imagine my teacher saying.
“Remember when I asked each of you to write a short story, just four or five paragraphs, about your favorite summer vacation. Each of you wrote of your wonderful summer memories. Well, I am going to give these writings back to you, only I will give your story to another classmate.
When you read your classmate’s vacation story notice that I have removed all the punctuation. There are no capital letters, no periods, no commas, no question marks, and no apostrophes. The sentences all run together because there is no punctuation. Oh, you say to me, “I cannot read this. It is all one long sentence.” You are correct.
Punctuation helps us to make sense of what we write. Your job is to punctuate the story I give you. Oh, I hear you. We have not studied all the punctuation rules. Well, after I see how well you do your job of punctuating, I will give the class some drill and practice exercises to teach and reinforce your knowledge and use of punctuation in your writing. After a bit of the drill and practice routine, I will give you a quiz to check on your learning and improvements. In two weeks, each of you will know, understand, and be able to use these five punctuations to communicate effectively in your writing. In another month we will study other punctuations.
I am anxious to see how well you do on this assignment.”
As she walked around handing out stories to punctuate, she quietly said to, “You wrote a wonderful story. Punctuation will help everyone to read it.” I noted she spoke personally and quietly to every classmate.
We are engaged.
The Big Duh!
We have known forever that effective instruction involves both the science and the art of teaching. Professional educators are trained in pedagogy and use theory-based strategies to cause children to learn. Effective educators also are masters in the art of teaching. They intuitively connect students to new learning with purpose and context, and personalization that places a student actively inside the lesson not as a passive completer of the lesson. The art of teaching is the heart of causing learning.