Skip this intro if you already follow me:
A little about me and the purpose of this blog. I am a licensed high school teacher (Language Arts 6 - 12) in the state of Tennessee going on 13 years now. I have 7 children and drive a school bus. Love me or hate me, none of my students will tell you that I am a typical school teacher. I, like many, believe that education is woefully equipped to keep pace with technology. As a technology enthusiast and educator publishing on a crypto website, I am trying to do my small part to bridge this gap for as many people as I can. Recently, the development of AI has created an accelerated urgency for education to take its head out of the sand and teach relevant skills in the classroom. The resources, lessons, and philosophy I publish here, I use in my own classroom, and anyone (especially homeschoolers) can use this blog as a resource to supplement their own instruction. If you are new to my blog, I suggest starting at the beginning as I will be structuring my lessons here the same way I would for my classroom. Tips are appreciated. Questions and feedback in the comments are welcome. So if you are a teacher, student, or homeschooler that is motivated to learn about, teach, or utilize all available technology in education (or know someone who is), I encourage you to give me a follow.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Spaced repetition is one of the most effective learning strategies to study any vocabulary set. Whether it be for a college class, a foreign language, or studying for a particular test such as the ACT or GRE, it is one of the best methods to put a large set of words into your long term memory over time. I particularly use it in my classroom to teach my students the vocabulary for the ACT, and I use it myself when studying other languages.
If you have ever used a program like Duolingo, then you are already familiar with the process of spaced repetition. Basically, as new content is introduced it is accompanied by a review of words that you are at risk of forgetting because of the span of time since you have last seen it. Words in particular are very easy forgotten if not frequently used in everyday speech or reading.
This method of learning does take time, hence it is the second lesson in my blog; it is one of the practices that should be begun as early as possible.
What I will do in this article is show you how to use AI to create your own spaced repetition materials without having to use or pay for a myriad of apps or programs that are centered around specific subjects such as Duolingo for foreign languages.
Again, I will use the format of preparing for the ACT as I do in my classroom, but please remember that you can use my prompts to create material for any subject. All you have to do is change the subject in the prompt, and of course, the list of words that you will feed the AI.
First, begin giving the AI a role that it will play out for the entirety of your conversation with it. Here is the prompt I used to do that:
I am a high school teacher trying to teach my students the vocabulary found on the ACT.I am going to give you a list of 175 words to load them into the conversation. After that, I will tell you what I want you to do with them. Do you understand?
From here it will say that it understands and ask you to load the words. Copy and paste the entire list of words that you are trying to remember. Hit enter, and then the AI will ask what you would like it to do. Then enter the following prompt:
I need you to help me create multiple choice vocab quizzes for my students to practice with. Each quiz will have 20 questions. Begin with words 1 - 20. The Multiple Choice options should alternate being labeled ABCD and FGHJ such as on the ACT. The structure of the questions should be fill-in-the blank where the correct word should be chosen according to the context of the sentence. Please make sure that there is only one correct option per question, and do not create the answer key until asked to do so.
When you hit enter, it will produce the questions for you. After having studied the first 20 words, take the quiz on a scratch piece of paper. Then type:
Now produce the answer key.
Now, simply check yourself. If you did not do well, you can practice over and over by simply asking for another version of the quiz:
Please create another version of the quiz so I can continue to practice. Do not provide the answer key until I ask for it.
Once you are satisfied with your or your student’s mastery of the first 20 words, it's time for the important part: The spaced repetition. Basically, you are going to start adding 10 new words at a time, but you are going to ask the AI to also give you a random selection of the previous words for the final 10 questions.
Now create another quiz that adds words 21-30. The first 10 questions will be the 10 new words for the week. The last 10 questions will be a random selection of any of the previous words that we have covered. Do not provide the answer key until I ask for it.
Simply rinse and repeat this process until you have created all the practice materials you need for the entire set of words. One thing to keep in mind: eventually the AI will start to forget things. You can tell this is happening when it starts to repeat the same words over and over for the second 10 questions. When this happens just start back at step one of this process in order to refresh its memory. This is particularly important for a large list of words. Once you start getting to somewhere around 50 words. Start adding the following line into the above prompt:
Please begin choosing words that you have not used in a while for the second 10 questions.
This is particularly important for spaced repetition. You want to see the words again just as you ALMOST forget them, not wait until you forget them completely. This is the part that helps your brain better store them into your long term memory. If you are a self-motivated learner or a teacher then I will give a tip.
You will know when you or your students have mastered the vocabulary, not when you’re scoring hundreds, but when the entire process becomes boring. I can tell when I am able to move on to a new topic or a new set of words when the excitement of getting an easy 100 fades and is replaced by a “Oh no, not this again” reaction.
Again, this process works very well for any set of new words (in any language). I use it myself to study foreign languages, and saved myself a 20$ a month subscription fee on the app that I was using.
Here is a brief example of what the AI will produce:
Quiz 1:
Questions 1-10 (New Words for this Week):
The project was in an ______ state, with many details yet to be finalized.
- inchoate
- hypothetical
- iconoclast
- impervious
The idea of traveling to Mars was once considered ______.
- inconceivable
- indifference
- inevitable
- inimical
Last tip if you are a teacher in a classroom. The way that I facilitate these quizzes for a large group of students is I pull the document up on my power board and zoom in so that only one question is visible at a time. Students have 25 seconds to answer it before I scroll to the next one. If you have an advanced class such as Honors or AP, reduce the time. The reason for this is because if you don’t know a word within 20 or so seconds, then you don’t know it. Particularly on standardized tests, it is important for students to immediately recognize that they do not know the correct meaning of a word, and to not waste time trying to do some sort of Zen Meditation trying to recall a word that is not in your long term memory. Make an educated guess and move on.
Follow me for more. And if you know a teacher, a homeschooler, or a self-motivated student, please refer them to me as I will be posting many articles and lessons that could be very beneficial to them. I personally have seen hours of work taken out of my week as a teacher by using AI to produce my materials, and I have seen quantifiable improvement in my students using techniques such as these that is only possible with an AI Assistant. Thank you and Happy Learning!
Also follow me on X where I link all of my articles: https://x.com/TheRealMrE09
