Implementation plan

Grades 3–5 Implementation Plan

Pacing, prerequisites, and extensions for the elementary band.

The activities

  • Grade 3 — Meet the Machine that Guesses. A helper robot in the classroom keeps making guesses. How does it know things? Crack four locks to find out how a guessing machine really works. (TEKS §126.8)
  • Grade 3 — AI All Around. AI is hiding in things you use every day. A voice helper, a video list, a photo app. Can you spot it? Crack four locks to find AI all around you. (TEKS §126.8)
  • Grade 4 — Garbage In, Garbage Out. An AI helper keeps giving wrong and unfair answers. The problem isn't magic — it's the data. Crack four locks to find out why. (TEKS §126.9)
  • Grade 4 — Teach the Machine. You are training a helper to tell cats from dogs. It learns from the examples you show it. Crack four locks to learn how a machine learns. (TEKS §126.9)
  • Grade 5 — The Prompt Lab. Two students typed the same idea into an AI and got very different results. The secret was in the prompt. Crack four locks to learn how to ask an AI well. (TEKS §126.10)
  • Grade 5 — Ask It Clearly. Two friends asked an AI about the same thing. One asked a fuzzy question and got a fuzzy answer. The other asked clearly and got just what they needed. Crack four locks to learn how to ask an AI a good question. (TEKS §126.10)

Pacing

  • One activity ≈ 25–40 minutes, including debrief. Younger classes may need two sittings.
  • Run one per grading period, or cluster them into a two-week AI-literacy unit.
  • Order matches the grade sequence; each grade deepens the pattern → data → bias → responsible-use arc.

Prerequisites

  • A browser and the activity link. No accounts, installs, or logins.
  • Students should be comfortable reading short paragraphs and clicking/tapping tiles.
  • Teachers: skim the activity’s teacher launch page and the correlation guide first.

Extension & differentiation

  • Home-language pairs. Use the 🌐 picker so newcomers reason in their strongest language, then answer.
  • Author-a-clue. Students write a new clue (or a real-world example) for the skill they found hardest.
  • Reason aloud. Require a spoken/written justification before each lock check; grade the reasoning, not the click.
  • Connect to a class agreement on checking facts and giving credit; revisit the "AI guesses from patterns" idea across the year.