Student learningfor Grades 3–5
Credit Where It's Due
After their own doodles get "borrowed" without credit, students learn to credit creators, ask permission, and write an honest note whenever AI helped with their work.
All activities Student learning
Disclose It
Students sort real-feeling academic integrity dilemmas across courses, then write honest AI-use disclosures and process logs they would stand behind.
Overview
Students increasingly take several courses at once with several different AI rules: brainstorming allowed in one, banned in another, required with a log in a third. The skill that transfers across all of them is not memorizing rules; it is being transparent about what you did and taking ownership of your process. In this activity, students sort fourteen scenarios by what the posted course policy requires, argue the gray areas, and then write a disclosure statement and process log for a piece of their own work. No devices are needed, because the thinking is about judgment and honesty, not tools.
Objectives
- Students will apply a stated course AI policy to specific scenarios and justify whether a use needs disclosure, needs permission first, or crosses the line.
- Students will write a specific AI-use disclosure statement that names the tool type, the task, what they kept, what they changed, and what they verified.
- Students will keep a process log that shows their own thinking and decisions across the stages of an assignment.
Materials
On paper
- Handout A: Where Does It Land? scenario sort (1 set per pair, strips cut apart, with the sorting mat)
- Handout B: Disclosure Statement and Process Log builder (1 per student)
- Handout C: Disclosure Quality Check (1 per student)
- Three signs for the room corners: "Disclose it," "Ask first," "Crosses the line"; a fourth for "No disclosure needed"
On screen
- Optional: the class's LMS assignment page, where students can paste their disclosure into a submission comment
- No AI tool is required for this activity
Before you start
- Print and cut Handout A so each pair has fourteen scenario strips and one sorting mat.
- Post the four category signs in the corners of the room.
- Write your own course's AI policy on the board. If you don't have one yet, use this activity to draft it with students (see Transfer).
- Ask each student to bring one recent assignment (any course) to use in Step 5. If they have none, they may use a hypothetical from Handout A.
Step by step
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10–5 min
Hook
Same move, different class
Read aloud: "You ask an AI chatbot to suggest three thesis statements. You pick one and rewrite it." Ask students to walk to the corner that fits: Disclose it, Ask first, Crosses the line, or No disclosure needed. Then say: "Now it's for a history class whose policy says AI may not be used for any writing task." Let students move again. Then: "Now it's for a biology lab where the syllabus says AI brainstorming is welcome; note it in your submission." Move again. Ask: "What changed? The action didn't. The context did."
Facilitator noteThis shows quickly why a single school-wide rule rarely covers every course, and why disclosure is the habit that travels.
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25–17 min
Explore
The scenario sort
Pairs sort the fourteen strips on Handout A onto the mat. Each strip names the course policy in parentheses; students must decide based on that policy, not on their personal opinion of it. For each strip, one partner states the category and the other must give the reason before it is placed. Circulate and ask: "Which words in the policy decided it?"
Facilitator noteThe "Ask first" category is the most important one. Students often think the only options are "fine" and "cheating." Ask when the policy is silent or ambiguous.
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317–27 min
Debrief
Argue the gray areas
Combine pairs into groups of four. Groups compare mats and flag strips where they disagree. Take the three most-disputed strips to the whole class. For each, one student argues for each category. Then reveal the key's reasoning and ask: "If you're not sure, what's the honest move?" Land on two principles: when in doubt, ask before, and when you've used it, say so specifically.
Facilitator noteStrips 9 (translation), 11 (grammar tools), and 13 (AI-generated study guide) usually spark the best debates. Accept reasoned disagreement where a policy is truly ambiguous.
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427–33 min
Model
Vague vs. specific disclosure
Write two disclosures on the board. Vague: "I used AI on this." Specific: "I used a chatbot approved by our school to generate a list of possible counterarguments for my essay. I kept one (about cost), rewrote it in my own words, and checked it against our class reading. I rejected the other four because they didn't fit my thesis. All drafting and revision are my own." Ask: "What can a teacher learn from the second one that the first hides?" Highlight the five parts: tool type, task, what I kept, what I changed, what I verified.
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533–48 min
Create
Write your own disclosure and log
Students complete Handout B for a real assignment they brought. If they did not use AI on it, they write the log anyway and end the disclosure with "No generative AI was used." That is a disclosure too. The process log asks for dates, stages, what they did, what tools (any tools, including search and grammar checkers) they used, and one decision they made at each stage.
Facilitator noteStudents who used AI in a way that crossed a policy line may freeze here. Tell the class plainly: "This is practice. No one will be penalized for what they write on this sheet today." Honesty needs a safe first rep.
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648–55 min
Reflect
Partner check
Partners swap Handout B and score each other's disclosure with Handout C. The reviewer circles one criterion to strengthen and writes a question the teacher might ask about the work. Students revise one sentence based on the feedback. Close by asking: "Why might being transparent about AI use matter even more to you than to your teacher?"
Facilitator noteLook for answers about trust, credit for their own thinking, and being able to explain their work later.
Paper or screen
Unplugged
This activity is designed unplugged. The sort, the corner moves, and the disclosure writing all work on paper. The only thing that changes with devices is where the disclosure gets submitted.
Digital
Post the scenarios as a drag-and-drop sort in your LMS or a shared slide deck. Students type their disclosure and process log into the assignment's submission comment or a document template, and peer reviewers leave comments using Handout C's criteria. Over a unit, a shared process-log document with dated entries gives you a far richer picture of student thinking than the final product alone.
Does it need a screen? Better unplugged: the learning is judgment and honesty, which need discussion rather than screens. The digital path earns its place later, when dated process logs attached to real submissions become ongoing evidence of how students work.
Evidence of learning
What you should be able to see or collect if it worked.
- Students justify sort placements by quoting the policy wording, not by personal opinion ("it says any writing task, so…").
- Students choose "Ask first" for genuinely ambiguous cases rather than defaulting to allowed or banned.
- Disclosures on Handout B include at least four of the five parts: tool type, task, kept, changed, verified.
- Process logs record a decision at each stage, showing the student's own thinking.
Adaptations
- Higher Ed
- Replace the course names on the strips with courses from a first-year schedule (composition, statistics, studio art, nursing lab) and have students compare the actual AI statements from two of their own syllabi.
- Dual credit
- Add a scenario where the high school and college policies for the same course differ, and discuss which one governs and whom to ask.
- Emergent bilinguals
- Provide Handout B's five disclosure parts as sentence frames ("I used ___ to ___. I kept ___. I changed ___. I checked ___.") and allow a first draft in any language.
- Students with IEPs or 504 plans
- Discuss how an accommodation (such as text-to-speech or a speech-to-text tool) fits into disclosure, and that approved accommodations are not an integrity issue.
Standards connections
Students apply course AI policies to scenarios, then write a specific disclosure and process log and revise it after peer feedback.
- TEKS
- ethics and laws (c)(9)compositionTEKS sections: Technology Applications high school Technology Applications courses (19 TAC Chapter 126); ELAR §110.36–§110.39
- Student Success Tool
- composing, revising, and editing, including the extended constructed response
Reflect
- How do I take responsibility for my own learning when I use AI tools? (S4.1)
- Why do transparency and accountability matter when AI is part of my work? (AI2.3)
- What ethical principle guides me when a course policy doesn't answer my question? (AI2.1)
What comes next
Attach a disclosure statement (even "No generative AI was used") to the next major assignment in any course. As a class, use the most-disputed scenario strips to co-write or revise your own course AI policy, then share it with families so the expectations are clear at home too.
Pairs well with
- Augmented K–16 AI Learning FrameworkA framework for deciding how much AI assistance fits a task, useful when co-writing a course policy.
- TCEA ELEs Alignment AssistantMap the disclosure habit to the AI and student ELE indicators.
