Plan skills like critical thinking deliberately across a course. A reusable prompt with placeholders (hours, weeks, learners, CEFR level) turns an LLM into a syllabus-design assistant whose output the teacher checks and edits.
Template pattern
- Role: “Act as an expert in critical thinking / instructional designer for PBL.”
- Placeholders: weekly hours · number of weeks · learner description · topic · CEFR level.
- Constraint: “focus on activities with the most impact on learners’ abilities.”
- Follow-up in the same chat: generate the actual materials.
- Check and edit every output.
PBL version (2024)
Ask for a project built on the 7 Gold Standard PBL design elements (PBLWorks), with teacher instructions, then a rubric (pass / strong pass / fail). Barriers to PBL in ELT: coursebooks, little training, lesson-length thinking, assessment, workload.
Limits
- Each post ends by promoting the author’s paid books or courses; no evidence of learning outcomes.
- Doesn’t address hallucination, or how a group rubric fairly assesses individuals.
Apply in my context (Claude)
- The placeholder template pattern is exactly what Coursebook-to-Lesson should expose to teachers: fixed structure, teacher-filled slots, editable output.
Connections
Lesson planning with AI - you outline, the model drafts options · Project-based learning needs language input at every stage