Using AI to enhance reading skills at HMP Humber

In celebration of World Book Day, the English class at HMP Humber incorporated AI tools in their classroom delivery to support with their celebrations and further enhance reading skills.

Using TeacherMatic to support reading 

For World Book Day, the English lesson focused on a range of activities to promote the event. One of these activities included using TeacherMatic to generate a class text, and to complete this activity, the class used the ‘Chat with TeacherMatic AI’ generator. 

The lesson focused on narrative and linked in with the World Book Day theme, as well as allowing the class to explore what their idea of a book or story is. The class used AI to build a story, starting with a basic prompt that they wrote together as a class: 

‘Write an introduction to a fictional text, no more than 100 words, include setting, protagonist and allude to a theme of conspiracies.’

When writing this prompt, the class thought about what key information they needed to include and what they thought AI might already know about this topic.

Once the text was produced, the class went through it one paragraph at a time and made changes/edits where needed. The changes were made in individual steps, so learners were clear on which part was changing each time. Edits were made to key elements of the story such as characters and locations and the learners went on to have discussions about where they could include things like direct speech and extra detail to describe the setting. 

When the learners were happy with their finished text, they were able to design a front cover as part of a workshop-wide competition.

By using the ‘Chat with TeacherMatic AI’ generator, it allowed the class to be open with their prompts, encouraging learners to think about what they are asking and edit responses easily. Through editing the story, learners were able to see what they were changing and improving with each new prompt. 

When speaking about the use of TeacherMatic in lessons the teacher spoke positively about the use of the AI tool: 

I use ChatGPT frequently, so find TeacherMatic quite straight forward to use
 

This is not the first or only use of TeacherMatic at HMP Humber, another teacher spoke positively about their experiences of using the tool:  

"We use TeacherMatic regularly ... the greatest impact has been with reading comprehensions. We can use news websites, YouTube videos or general queries to create reading comprehensions tailored to the interests of the class, which has led to higher levels of engagement and personal buy-in. Some of the topics can be very gritty, but you can tailor the prompts so that the text needs to use language appropriate for the classroom"

HMP Humber have also used a number of other generators but have found the open-ended chat to be the most useful with their learners. The focus on writing prompts and using digital tools such as TeacherMatic are helping learners further develop their digital skills in AI.  

To learn more about how we utilise digital tools in our education provision, take a look at our 2024/25 digital strategy.