These seven AI literacy activities help students question generated answers, verify sources, examine bias, and explain their own decisions. Use them as short lessons or combine them into a sequence. The suggested timings below are planning estimates that you can adapt to your class.
Before you begin
Use a school-approved tool with the appropriate access and age settings, or provide teacher-prepared outputs on paper. Students do not need personal AI accounts to compare, annotate, and critique responses. Choose familiar curriculum content so students can judge the claims, and avoid uploading personal information.
For every activity, collect evidence of the student’s thinking: an annotated response, source check, revised prompt, or explanation of a decision. A polished AI answer alone does not show what the student learned.
1. Search Smarter: ChatGPT vs. Google: A Classroom Inquiry
Suggested time and evidence: 20 minutes. Collect a comparison of two claims and the sources used to check them.
Ask students to research a topic using both ChatGPT and a mainstream search engine like Google. Then have them compare the results side by side:
- What kind of information does each tool prioritize?
- Are there differences in depth, tone, or bias?
- Which one is better at summarizing? Which one offers more sources?
This activity is all about sharpening digital literacy. Students learn to interrogate sources, evaluate reliability, and understand how algorithms shape what we see.
2. Interrogate the Machine: Critically Evaluating ChatGPT’s Responses
Suggested time and evidence: 20 minutes. Collect an annotated answer showing one supported claim, one uncertainty, and one correction.
Give students a prompt and ask them to critically evaluate ChatGPT’s response. What did it do well? What’s vague, missing, or misleading?
- Are the facts accurate and up-to-date?
- Is the reasoning sound or just confident-sounding fluff?
- What perspectives or counterarguments are missing?
This activity will help you teach students to resist polished nonsense and develop a healthy skepticism even when the answer “sounds right.” Let them become editors, not echo chambers.
3. Prompt Like a Pro: Iterating with ChatGPT
Suggested time and evidence: 15 minutes. Collect the first prompt, revised prompt, and a brief explanation of what changed.
Teach students that good prompts aren’t born, they’re built. Start with a vague prompt and show how a back-and-forth with ChatGPT can sharpen it into something specific, useful, and powerful
Then, put that final prompt to work:
- Use it in Midjourney to generate an image
- Feed it into Canva’s AI to build an interactive worksheet
- Plug it into Canva Code to generate a game or simulation
This activity trains students to think like designers. Besides asking questions, they also get to refine them with intent. The goal is not necessarily a better AI output but rather a better thinking process.
4. Bias Check: Is ChatGPT Playing Fair?
Suggested time and evidence: 25 minutes. Collect a careful comparison of outputs, noting what the small sample can and cannot show.
AI outputs aren’t neutral. They reflect the data they’re trained on and, as we all know by now, that data has blind spots. Ask students to analyze a ChatGPT response for bias:
- Whose perspective is centered or missing?
- Does it reinforce stereotypes, assumptions, or dominant narratives?
- What happens when you change the phrasing of the prompt? The tone? The identity markers?
Encourage students to test the limits. Push the AI. Rewrite the prompts. Compare answers.
This is definitely much more than a tech exercise, it’s a lesson in power, perspective, and digital responsibility.
5. Using ChatGPT with Other Tools
Suggested time and evidence: 30 minutes. Collect the final artifact and a short record of the student’s own revisions.
Pair ChatGPT with another tool like Canva, Slides, or any creative platform and have students build something with it.
Examples:
- Use ChatGPT to outline a concept, then turn it into an infographic in Canva
- Summarize a research topic, then present it in Google Slides
- Brainstorm game mechanics, then build it in Scratch or Canva Code
In this activity, students learn to move from ideas to artifacts, from raw input to refined output. These are transferable skills: research, design, communication, all wrapped in one task.
6. Talk to the Image: Exploring Visuals with ChatGPT
Suggested time and evidence: 20 minutes. Collect a list separating visible observations from the AI’s interpretations.
Upload an image into ChatGPT and challenge students to interact with it.
What they can do:
- Ask ChatGPT to describe or analyze what’s in the image
- Search for historical, scientific, or cultural references based on its content
- Transcribe or translate any visible text
- Ask it to generate a new image in a similar style or mood
This turns passive viewing into active inquiry. It trains students to observe closely, ask questions, and see visuals as data.
7. Make It Multidisciplinary: Cross-Curricular Prompts with ChatGPT
Suggested time and evidence: 30 minutes. Collect two disciplinary explanations and the evidence each requires.
Use ChatGPT to build bridges between subjects. Give students a topic (e.g., say climate change, artificial intelligence, or ancient civilizations) and ask them to explore it from multiple disciplinary angles.
For example:
- What are the scientific causes of climate change? (Science)
- How has it influenced global policy? (Social Studies)
- Can you write a poem or short story from the perspective of the Earth? (Language Arts)
- What data would you collect to measure its effects? (Math)
This kind of prompt trains students to make connections, see patterns, and transfer knowledge across domains. ChatGPT helps scaffold the process, but the thinking is all theirs.
Final thoughts
ChatGPT can be a great tool for deeper thinking if used with intention and responsibility and it is our role as teachers and educators to help students build the essential critical thinking skills that can help them do that. These skills include: questioning, evaluating, synthesizing, and creating. Use ChatGPT to teach them how to explore, challenge, and connect ideas, skills they can carry far beyond your classroom.
A student reflection sheet to copy
- What was the task, and which AI tool or prepared response did you use?
- Which claim did you check? Record the source and relevant passage.
- What did you change or reject, and why?
- What remains uncertain?
- What can you now explain or do without AI assistance?
How to assess the activities
Assess source checking, reasoning, and justified revision. A strong response identifies a specific claim, checks appropriate evidence, explains the correction, and acknowledges uncertainty. Ask students to complete a brief independent explanation at the end rather than grading the fluency of the AI output.
For a guided student activity you can adapt, see the SchoolAI observation-and-inference lesson. Preview the interaction and collect an independent response to check learning.
Related guides and further reading
Explore more in AI in Education.
