Teacher field guide

You don’t need to be
the AI expert.

Your job is to make the thinking visible. The lesson supplies the mechanism, the questions and the evidence to look for.

Start with a prediction.

Choose a lesson in the curriculum explorer and read its starting setup. Ask students to explain what they expect and why before revealing results. Young learners can draw, point or dictate to an adult. A mistaken prediction is useful: preserve it so the student can explain what changed their mind.

Meet the bushland buddies.

Pip the possum, Wattle the wombat and Kiki the kookaburra join nine Foundation–Year 6 investigations. Use their short challenges to invite a prediction, their hints to start a controlled test, and “What did we notice?” to discuss the actual evidence. A surprising result is a useful discovery, not a wrong answer to hide.

Character moments and diagram movements are brief and silent. The Animations control turns them off, and the device’s reduced-motion preference is respected. The same calculations and evidence remain available with motion off.

Make the comparison fair.

Work in pairs. One learner operates the system; the other predicts and records. Swap halfway through. Save the original experiment, change one meaningful variable and save the second. Check the displayed settings before attributing a result to your change. If you changed several things, rerun with one change.

Teach the failure, not just the success.

Every lesson includes a counterexample. Give students time to encounter it before revealing the explanation. Ask which part of their explanation it challenges. Then ask for a redesign that is tested on both the original case and the counterexample. Some trade-offs cannot be removed; students should document them.

Use the complete package.

The teacher view contains preparation, materials, vocabulary, curriculum connections, a timed sequence, exact prompts, likely responses, formative assessment and a lesson-specific rubric. Download the printable guide or editable journal before class. Senior lessons span two or three sessions; stop at the indicated transition rather than compressing the investigation.

Choose hardware for learning depth.

The browser pathway is the complete core lesson. It needs no Python, terminal or student account. Mac Studio and DGX Spark extensions add larger controlled experiments and instrumentation. Early-years extensions are teacher-operated. Read the execution status in each bundle: a tested Apple M3 run is not a Mac Studio benchmark, and static checking is not a DGX Spark hardware test.

Collect evidence, not polished output.

Assess the student’s prediction, controlled change, trace, counterexample, repair and explanation. Ask them to reproduce one result and explain its limitation. Reward a well-diagnosed failure. A fluent answer or a green structural check alone is insufficient.

Plan for access.

Use a shared projector and paper materials when devices are limited. Controls support keyboard input; range controls use arrow keys. On narrow screens, diagrams preserve readable labels and can be panned inside their frame. Motion respects reduced-motion preferences. Journals support adult scribing and oral evidence.

Keep boundaries explicit.

Use the supplied synthetic data. No student accounts, photos, voices or private records are needed. Evidence remains in the current browser on this device when remembering is enabled. Turn remembering off on shared devices, clear work after class, and download a project to move between devices. Follow your school’s policies for sharing student work and use the responsible-use guidance.

Curriculum and sources.

Brightlab develops understanding, creation and responsible decision-making in the spirit of ACARA’s AI curriculum connection. F–10 planning connections use Version 9.0 learning areas and capabilities. They are not claims of endorsement or exhaustive descriptor coverage. Map senior lessons to your jurisdiction’s syllabus.