Start in the planning huddle

A coach sits with a teacher who pasted standards into an AI tool and accepted the first lesson outline. The plan looks complete. Neither of them can say which cognitive demand the exit ticket actually checks. The tool was fast. The thinking never happened. (Illustrative planning huddle only.)

Most weak AI planning starts here: polished output mistaken for instructional design.

The principle: AI drafts; humans keep the decisions

Tip 15 on The 25 Tips is Using AI to Support in Planning and Content for Lessons, under EdTech and AI. AI can speed planning and content drafting. The coach and teacher still decide the learning goal, the evidence of learning, and the cognitive load of the task. Speed without a learning-science filter produces polished busywork. For a plain refresher on why memory and load matter in coaching talk, see How Memory Works and the Cognitive Load Coaching Check.

Do not paste student work, teacher evaluation notes, or identifiable classroom data into a cloud tool unless your district policy and the vendor agreement allow it.

Four checks before any AI draft leaves the huddle

Write these by hand before you accept AI output:

1. Objective clarity: what will students know or be able to do?
2. Retrieval or practice demand: where do students have to pull knowledge out, not just receive it?
3. Worked example or model: where do students see the thinking before independent work?
4. Exit evidence: does the exit check match the objective?

AI can draft materials after those four answers exist. Humans keep the decisions. Crush It from the Start: 25 Tips for Instructional Coaches and Leaders (SchoolRubric) keeps coaching focused on instruction, not on collecting shiny artifacts.

Why this matters

The risk is not using AI. The risk is skipping the thinking AI cannot own. When coaches model that filter, teachers learn to treat AI as a drafting partner instead of an autopilot.

Treat the four checks as a gate, not a decoration. If the objective is fuzzy, do not prompt yet. If the exit ticket checks a different skill than the objective names, rewrite the ticket before you polish the slides.

Coaches model this filter once, and teachers start bringing better prompts to the next huddle. That is the habit worth building.

Try it this week

1. Run one planning huddle where the four checks are written before any prompt is sent.
2. Ask AI only for drafts that serve those checks.
3. Reject or rewrite any exit ticket that does not match the objective.
4. Save the four-check list in your coaching notes template.

Keep going

1. Related posts on this site: How Memory Works, How Coaching Happens, and the Cognitive Load Coaching Check.
2. Subscribe to Navigating Education: matthewrhoads.com/subscribe.
3. Templates: the Coach Toolkit and the Coaching Conversation Guide.
4. Consulting: Plan an Engagement.

The book is Crush It from the Start: 25 Tips for Instructional Coaches and Leaders (SchoolRubric).