40 Creative and Practical Ways Teachers Are Using AI (with Real Examples You’ll Want to Try)

Let’s be real, if you're a teacher in 2025, AI is officially part of your world. From streamlining lesson prep to rewriting IEP goals in half the time, AI is changing how we teach and plan. And whether you're cautiously curious or already tinkering with ChatGPT on your planning period, one thing’s clear, the best teachers are using AI not to replace their creativity, but to amplify it.

That’s why I pulled together this massive list of 40 real-world ways teachers are using AI right now, based on true stories, practical wins, and creative hacks from the classroom. And bonus? Tools like TeachShare make it ridiculously easy to adapt these ideas into something that works for your students.

I break down the ways to use AI in classroom into 5 sub-sections, so it's organized for you to look into the section you prefer!

Planning & Content Creation

1. Lesson Planning in Minutes

Tired? Behind on prep? Just type your topic and grade level into TeachShare’s Creator Tool, and boom: lesson ideas, standards-aligned objectives, and even rubrics.

2. Differentiated Instruction at Scale

One teacher used AI to explain the water cycle in five styles: as a rap, a bedtime story, and a TikTok. Bonus: TeachShare lets you refine these ideas and scaffold for different learners.

3. Curriculum Mapping or Unit Building

Teachers are now rebuilding entire units (or even full-year curricula) with help from AI. Social Studies, Biology, Chemistry, Calculus, or even Health, it works across subjects.

4. Text Simplification & Leveling

AI helps simplify or adapt readings for English language learners or students with IEPs. With TeachShare, you can generate multiple versions of assignments and generate tailored IEP goals for your students.

5. Creative Writing Prompts & Starters

Ask AI to create a story starter based on your theme or genre. A 6th-grade teacher even had AI write haikus to model poetic structure.

6. Scaffolded Worksheets & Project Guides

Need step-by-step guides for research or design tasks? Use TeachShare’s templates to build them fast. They even have a specific Scaffolding Boost that does all the work for you.

7. Rubric Design Made Easy

Grading group presentations or reflective journals? Use TeachShare’s Rubric Generator to build, adjust, or co-create rubrics with students.

8. Anchor Charts & Vocabulary Lists

AI can generate content-rich keyword banks or visual anchors tailored to your topic, great for science, ELA, or Social Studies. TeachShare even has a Vocabulary List Generator in its TeachShare ToolBox that can do this for you in a blink of an eye.

9. Themed Escape Rooms & Puzzle Challenges

Yes, teachers are using AI to create entire digital escape rooms.

Bonus: TeachShare lets you attach reflection prompts or scoring sheets too.

10. Infographic Outlines or Poster Text

One Digital Media Studies teacher used AI to write fake magazine articles for students to lay out in Adobe InDesign.

Writing, Feedback & Assessment

11. Draft Feedback that Doesn’t Take Hours

Teachers are using AI to offer warm-up feedback before final submissions. You can still add your human touch, but AI does the heavy lifting for you!

12. Self-Assessment & Peer Review Forms

Use TeachShare to create editable peer review checklists and reflection forms with real-time scoring.

13. AI-Revised vs. Student-Original Comparison

Have students submit writing, run it through ChatGPT for revision, and compare. It teaches editing, voice, and critical thinking in one task.

14. Short-Answer Rubrics and Model Responses

Teachers use AI to generate exemplar responses, great for AP, IB, or college-prep writing practice. TeachShare has an amazing AI rubric generator, which just makes you fill out grade-level, point-scale, topic, and assignment description and generate a FULL rubric for you.

15. Quiz & Test Item Generation

Multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, true/false, and higher-order prompts? AI can build them in seconds. Use TeachShare to create new differentiated assessments to use in your classroom. You can use their AI multiple choice quiz generator or their Creator Tool.

16. Personalized Study Guides

Some teachers use AI to create targeted study guides based on student performance or topic gaps.

17. IEP Goal Drafting

Several special ed teachers say AI helps them generate more detailed and ambitious goals much faster. Use TeachShare's Support Goals Creator to do this SUPER quick!

18. Report Card Comment Help

AI cuts down hours of writing thoughtful, personalized comments. Just tweak and go. Use TeachShare's AI Student Work Feedback tool to generate useful and insightful comments for your students.

19. Auto-Grading Open Response Items (With Supervision)

AI won’t replace your judgment, but it can highlight patterns or suggest scoring ranges on short answer questions. TeachShare offers an auto-grader for the assignments your students turn in!

20. Student Reflection Support

Use TeachShare to create reflection journal prompts for deeper thinking. Simply use the Creator tool to ask AI to curate this for you!

Interactive & Student-Led Learning

21. Role-Playing & Scenario-Based Learning

Use AI to create interview scripts, character bios, or historical reenactments.

Bonus: Have students be the AI and roleplay in return.

22. Mock Debates & Socratic Seminars

Generate opposing arguments, case prompts, or ethical dilemmas to fuel classroom discussion.

23. Vocabulary Games & Word Builders

Use AI to create crosswords, word walls, or even silly vocab Mad Libs.

24. Readers Theater or Script Writing

Need a short play or dramatic reading? AI can whip up scripts to build reading fluency and engagement.

25. Podcast & Video Content Support

AI helps script or outline student podcasts, public service announcements, or explainer videos.

26. Inquiry-Based Research Prompts

Generate open-ended, leveled questions for student research projects with TeachShare’s inquiry scaffolding templates.

27. Design Thinking & STEM Projects

Ask AI to generate constraints for an engineering challenge or a new invention prompt. Pair with TeachShare’s design challenge template.

28. Peer Teaching Materials

Have students use AI to generate teaching slides or explainers, then teach each other (one of my favorite ways to teach different topics, the best way to test their understanding is to make them explain it to each other).

Language, Literacy & Translation

29. Quick Translation for Multilingual Classrooms

Translate instructions, vocab, or lesson summaries, this is SUPER helpful for bilingual or ESL students in your classroom.

30. CEFR-Level Grammar Practice

Use AI to generate quizzes, dictation, and prompts aligned to CEFR or TOEFL/IELTS levels.

31. Reading Comprehension from Videos

Paste a YouTube link and ask AI to build comprehension questions. Helps boost media literacy too. Use TeachShare's Source button when creating your resource, to simply paste in the Youtube link you want to draw inspiration from.

32. Literary Analysis Prompts & Character Profiles

Want a quick breakdown of a novel’s theme or a character map for “Fahrenheit 451”? Simply ask AI like TeachShare to do exactly that.

Engagement, Management & Beyond

33. Visual Storytelling & Illustration

Need a quick image to represent a character, concept, or theme? TeachShare even offers an AI Image Generator tool that you can use when creating resources.

34. Timed Challenges for Classroom Management

One middle school teacher used AI to generate a series of mystery-themed classroom challenges, which kept students focused and excited during transitions.

35. “Would You Rather” & Bell Ringers

AI can make endless warm-ups, exit tickets, and daily questions that hook students.

36. Flipped Classroom Resources

Generate lesson explainers for students to review at home. Then use class time for hands-on practice or discussion.

37. Email & Professional Writing Help

Draft a parent update, field trip reminder, or grant proposal, just clean it up and send. TeachShare literally has an AI tool for Professional Email Generating which makes it a breeze.

38. Virtual Field Trips & Location-Based Prompts

AI tools can simulate walking tours of museums or neighborhoods, or generate geography-based writing tasks.

39. Personal Professional Development

Teachers use AI to summarize research articles, plan PD workshops, and even draft grant applications or M.Ed. papers.

40. Staff Collaboration & Resource Sharing

Use TeachShare not just for resource creation but to share your AI creations with colleagues and build a school-wide collection of awesome and ethical AI-enhanced resources.

Final Thoughts: AI Is the Tool, You Are the Magic

From lesson plans to classroom conversations, AI is here to help, not replace. But we also know you’re busy. That’s why tools like TeachShare exist, to take what works from AI, filter it through real teacher wisdom, and give you classroom-ready content in mere seconds. Whether you’re just starting or already exploring, the best way to get better with AI is to share what you try and build with others. Ready to explore? Head to TeachShare, browse what teachers like you are doing, and try your first AI-powered resource today. Because the future of education isn’t AI.It’s AI + you.