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How to use Aila, our AI lesson assistant

Learn more about Aila and how to get started

Contents

What is Aila?

Aila is an AI lesson assistant giving you the power to create lesson plans and resources tailored specifically for your pupils in minutes, saving you valuable time to focus on bringing the lesson to life and supporting pupils.

Use Aila to quickly adapt Oak lessons for your class and context or create something you need that you can’t find in the lesson planning and teaching resources we already have.

Read our blog: Introducing Aila, our AI lesson assistant.

You can have confidence in what you create with the help of Aila. The tool draws on our high-quality curriculum resources, which have been designed by expert teachers and are national curriculum aligned. 

The following video features our AI Quality and Safety Principal, Hannah-Beth Clark, talking through some of the advantages of using Aila to help with lesson planning. ⬇️

Accessing Aila

The first time you use Aila, click the 'Start creating with AI' button to sign in. You'll then be taken to our Create your account page.

Create your Aila account options of using Google, Microsoft or an email address.

If you are a Microsoft or Google school, please select this sign in method. 

If you enter your email address you’ll be sent a verification email. Check your emails to verify that you want to sign in to Aila.

You will need to verify your email address on the same device and browser you originally used to start downloading a full unit.

Did you know?

Signing in will also give you access to:

📚My library so you can save units and content you want to revisit quickly to access anytime, anywhere, from any device. See our help article: How do I use My library?

⬇️Downloading full units so you can save time when planning lessons by downloading everything in a unit in one go. Read our help article: Downloading full units.

What can I create with Aila?

Lesson plans

Watch a video walk-through where our Curriculum Design Lead, Toby, takes you through all you need to know about lesson planning with Aila. ⬇️

 

Use our Aila prompt guide to help you refine your prompts specifically for your needs.

Use Aila to make a lesson plan, slide deck, quizzes and a worksheet, tailor-made for your pupils. This can be downloaded to help with your planning offline and easily shared with colleagues.

Start by selecting Create a lesson.

Then type a lesson title and key stage into the input box on the first screen and clicking the arrow key.

Your lesson plan will include:

  • Lesson details
  • Learning outcome
  • Learning cycle outcomes
  • Prior knowledge
  • Key learning points
  • Misconceptions
  • Keywords
  • Starter quiz
  • Learning cycles (Explanation, Checks for understanding, Practice and Feedback)
  • Exit quiz
  • Additional materials (optional - for example case study context sheet, an essay title with success criteria for pupils to complete for homework, suggestions for alternative art or equipment you can use for your lesson).

Aila will pause at key points during the lesson plan creation and will ask you to review the content generated.

You can also ask Aila to modify each section, for example:

  • Increase or decrease the literacy level of your keywordsAila modify button
  • Add specific case studies or examples to your explanations
  • Change the practice tasks for you.

The lesson plan is made of 10 sections. All 10 sections need to be complete before you can download and share your plan.

Content generated by Aila should be reviewed and adapted to ensure accuracy and relevance before sharing.

How do I tailor the lesson plans to my needs?

Aila is designed to guide you through the process of co-creating a lesson plan and teaching materials. The more you specify to Aila, the better your resources will be. 

You can ask Aila to adapt the resources to suit your geographical context, the reading age of pupils in your class, or any other needs your pupils may have.

Downloading and sharing your lesson plans

Once all 10 sections of your lesson plan are complete the 'Download resources' button will become available to select. 

You will be able to download the following documents:

  • Lesson plan, including all sections
  • Starter quiz (PDF/Docx file)
  • Slides (PDF/PPTX file)
  • Worksheet (PDF/Docx file)
  • Exit quiz (PDF/Docx file)
  • Additional materials (PDF/Docx file).

If you have a Google account, you will also be able to edit these documents directly.

You can also use the 'Share lesson' button to produce a URL to share with colleagues.

If you are creating teaching materials, once you’re happy with the result you can use the 'Download (.zip)' button to download editable documents.

Slide deck images

We know that images are really important to support explanations but Aila doesn't currently produce images or diagrams. Image production is a feature that will come with a future iteration of Aila, but to help teachers with this aspect of lesson design, we currently provide an 'image suggestion' to help you find an appropriate image with Google.

How do I find my previously made lesson plans?

You can return to any previously made lesson plan by signing in again and clicking the 'menu' icon in the top left corner. 

Creating other teaching materials with Aila

We’re currently trialling a new feature in Aila so you can create stand-alone teaching materials for you including:

  • Glossaries
  • Comprehension tasks
  • More starter quiz questions
  • More exit quiz questions.

We’d love you to try this feature out and give us some feedback.

FAQs

Read our blog: Your top 5 questions about Aila.

More questions? See our help article: Aila FAQs or contact us.

Further information

Watch our webinar recordings and read our blogs on AI in education.