How to use ChatGPT in your homeschool

As a homeschool mom, I know firsthand how challenging it can be to balance the responsibilities of parenting and teaching. However, I have discovered an excellent tool that can help enhance the quality and efficiency of our homeschooling experience: ChatGPT. ChatGPT is an AI-based language model developed by OpenAI, which uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to given prompts. In this article, I’ll be sharing some specific ways that ChatGPT can help improve your homeschooling experience and why I recommend it to other homeschooling families.

1. Lesson Planning: With ChatGPT, you can easily input a topic and receive various ideas for activities, projects, and assessments. This feature is particularly helpful for subjects that you’re not an expert in. Additionally, you can use ChatGPT to generate weekly subject lesson plans based on core curriculum for a specific grade level, including useful internet links and suggested projects.
   Try this prompt: “Make a 1st quarter homeschool learning plan for Grade 9 using the Philippine DepEd K-12 curriculum. Using columns, show a list of topics per week, a list of internet resources to teach the topic (put the actual links), and add suggested projects or performance tasks.”
2. Slide Shows: ChatGPT can write a slideshow outline for any topic and a specific grade level, including formative assessment questions.
   Try this prompt: “Write an outline for a slideshow about the UN SDGs for teaching Grades 6, including a formative assessment.”
3. Answering Questions: Kids are naturally curious, and ours are no exception. ChatGPT can provide clear and concise answers to any question you input, saving you time from having to search for answers yourself. Of course there has to be some background checking needed if we are to make sure that we are getting the facts. Also, you can use this AI to “explain the topic to a second grader” or any specific age group you need to tailor the explanation to.
   Try this prompt: “Give a detailed explanation on the difference between the young earth creation theory and the big bang theory in a way that can be understood by a 7-year old and then for a 18-year old.”
4. Feedback: One of the challenges of homeschooling is providing feedback to my children on their work. ChatGPT can analyze a piece of writing and provide suggestions for improvement, such as identifying areas where the writing may be repetitive or unclear.
5. Research: ChatGPT can assist in finding useful and many reliable sources. It can summarize articles or even books, making it easier to decide if that particular resource is actually useful for a certain project or not. Thus, it can be a useful tool that speeds up the initial gathering of information.
   Try this prompt: “Write a summary of the book “Conjugal Dictatorship” and list down the main points that can be used for discussion for Junior High School. Include a website link that can be a resource for more information for each point raised.”
6. Personalized Learning: ChatGPT can also be used to personalize my children’s learning experience by generating activities and resources based on their interests and strengths. This helps them stay engaged and motivated, leading to a more enjoyable and effective learning experience. For example you can have it write silly songs or poetry which can be an interesting way to introduce lessons.
   Try this prompt: “Write a poem for Grade 1 students about a cat who lives in Mars who dreams visiting the creatures that live on the other planets in the solar system. Include the important details to remember about each planet.”
7. Build a pre-reading or advance organizer: Ask ChatGPT to extract the important vocabulary words from any reading material and instruct it to come up with a list of keywords and definitions.
8. Teach fact-checking: Ask ChatGPT about topics that you know will most likely have a lot of false information written about it and then evaluate the answers together with your child. Take note that this AI tool will always sound like an expert, even when it is actually giving you biased or false information. Remember that it is only getting what it can find online, and so it is prone to generating inaccuracies.
   Additionally, ChatGPT was trained from data only up to 2021, and while it is continually being improved, currently, it is still not the best resource for information from 2022 up to the present.
9. Create solved examples of math problems: You can direct it to give an example of a physics or algebraic equation with an explanation for each step of the solution.
   Try this prompt: “Give an example of a math problem for Grade 9 3rd quarter lesson based on the Philippine DepEd K-12 curriculum and include detailed explanations on each step of the solution.”
10. Assessment: Ask ChatGPT to create tests using any format. You can paste the title of a classic piece of literature (something it can find on the internet) and it will come up with a test bank and answer key.
    Try this prompt: “Make a Grade 5 assessment tool with answer key for a unit study on “The Call of the Wild.” Include writing an essay on the theme of the book and how it can be applied to a real-life situation.”
    You can also ask the AI to compose a rubric for any performance task and have it use a specific rating scale, or have it write engaging, higher-order prompts for discussion or for writing an essay.
    Try this prompt: “Write a performance task guide on a project for Grade 5 Science for 4th Quarter using Philippine DepEd K-12 curriculum. Include the rubrics for grading.”

Overall, ChatGPT is proving itself to be an incredibly promising tool for our homeschooling experience. It helps save us time, provides useful information, and enhances our children’s self-directed learning.

One thing to take note of is that ChatGPT is just a language model and cannot distinguish right or wrong. It may have access to all the knowledge in the internet but it cannot apply wisdom unless we direct it to with clear prompts and precise directions. Using it responsibly means understanding that its outputs are merely drafts that we have to check for accuracy and revise based on our own wisdom. However, AI technology is still being continuously improved, and with ChatGPT-4 upgrade which will let you turn text into video, we can expect that AI will get better and even more powerful as time goes by. Knowing how to use it effectively will be a valuable skill for everyone.

That being said, if you’re a homeschooling family looking to streamline your teaching process and empower your children with a healthy relationship with technology, I highly recommend giving ChatGPT a try.