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Author: Fravilli Giuliano
Unit Overview
The following unit of work is meant for students in fifth year of high school attending a state-run technical school. The main goal of the unit will be to incorporate the use of modals and descriptive vocabulary in order to create a new product and pitch it to their classmates. The unit will follow a TBL approach and each lesson will aim to provide the students the necessary tools to complete a final task. In this case, the final task will ask students to get together in groups of 3 or 4 and come up with a new project that can be implemented in their houses or daily lives and to come up with a short sales pitch in order to convince their classmates.
Tool Selection Rationale
In order to include AI tools to enhance language teaching, we should look into some of the frameworks proposed around the world that deal with the impact and implementation of generative AI.
One of the frameworks that can be applied in this unit is the AI-TPACK framework. Being an update of the TPACK framework coined in 2005, the AI-TPACK seeks to include the understanding and use of AI within the realm of the Technological Knowledge realm proposed by the authors (Ning et al, 2024). Both TPACK and AI-TPACK frameworks propose an interplay between the realms of what the authors describe as Technical, Pedagogical ,and Content knowledge. In this improved version, the use of AI introduces a figure known as “AI entities functioning as educators“ that will help teachers to create and deliver more precise lessons (P.3). This introduction of AI into our lessons is met with some requirements mostly highlighted in the description of some of the instances of interplay between the different realms. In particular, we find the requirements in the AI-Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (AI-TPK) interplay defined as “recognizing the mutual support, provisioning, and constraints between AI technologies and pedagogy, as well as being able to design effective teaching strategies and activities accordingly” (P.5). Once a teacher meets the knowledge required to use AI in a ethical and proficient way, we will be able to include AI in our lessons with the knowledge that our students will benefit from its use.
Another framework that can be applied is the DigCompEDU framework. It was created by the European Commission in order to set some goals and standards when including the newly implemented technologies in the realm of education. This framework is comprised of 22 competences divided in 6 areas:
Professional Engagement
Digital Resources
Teaching and Learning
Assessment
Empowering Learners
Facilitating Learner's Digital Competence
Some of the main goals of DigCompEDU is the inclusion to AI literacy, critical thinking and online safety (Bekiaridis, 2024). When AI is introduced into a lesson plan, AI literacy, critical thinking, and online safety take on a greater role than before since students are exposed to a bigger environment that contains a lot of new information and a lot of uncertainties. The creation of AI generated images may simplify the process of including images in their work but as any new tool, AI needs to be handled carefully and critically (P.26, 27). Some of the issues we should be aware of can be:
Privacy and Data Security
Cheating and Misuse of AI
Ethical and Social Unfairness
In this sample lesson, the teacher will aim to be a facilitator while giving the students agency to work with AI to create their final tasks.
(Ning et al, 2024, P.5)
(European Commission, 2020)
Tutorial on How to Use
To see the tutorial click here!
The following tutorial was made by Guido de Benedetto and Lucas Gullino on the main page of Pixlr. Click here to find more information on the tool.
The use of Gen-AI to create images and content by students is one of the aspects that the aforementioned frameworks aim to. The aid of on-demand images is highlighted by some authors who have found that "the teachers maximized the students’ language output by using newly generated images and songs as anchors for conversations" (Sadikova & Kayumova, 2025). The agency given to the students at the moment of working with AI may not only encourage a smoother interplay between the language content and the completion of the task but also increase the interest and engagement of the students involved (Vigna-Taglianti, 2024). It is paramount to keep in mind that the use of AI should be done ethically and carefully, more specifically, if it's going to be a tool given to the students since it will require a previous work that fosters AI literacy (Bekiaridis, 2024).
Lesson Sample
This forty minute lesson will take place as the last leg of the unit in which the students will start to give shape to their final task. The students at this point are already aware of what the final task will entail and have been brainstorming some ideas as a group.
Pre-Listening: The teacher will ask the students to share how confident they are of their ideas and what the challenges were in order to come together with a plan. After discussing some of the hurdles, the teacher will ask them to also start thinking on how to convince their classmates of the usefulness of their invention. In order to help on that front, the teacher will show them a short video dealing with tips on how to make an effective sales pitch.
TED's Youtube Channel
While-Listening: Before starting the video, the teacher will ask students to prepare to catch from the video the three big tips for an effective sales pitch. Once they have identified each one of them, they will rank them in terms of importance depending on their opinion.
After watching the video, the teacher will ask students to share their answers in order to make sure everyone was able to follow the main ideas.
Post-Listening: With the answers revealed, some students will be asked to justify their choices in the ranking and a tally can be kept on the board as more students share their opinions to see which tip seems the most useful.
Practice/Final Task Creation: The groups will be given time in class to work on their final tasks together and will be asked to finish it for a later date. They will use this time in class to clarify concepts and to negotiate the contents of the task. As tools to complete this task, the teacher will propose the use of Pixlr as an AI Image generator to create the sample image of the project they are working on as a visual aid on their pitch. Using the same means to show the video, the teacher will show a tutorial (found above) on how to use the app and even create one live in the classroom. The link to the tutorial will be shared as well for students to have while they work at home. The rest of the work needed to finish the final task will be done at home and presented along with a pitch on the following class.
To read more about my work visit my PLE
References:
Bekiaridis, G. (2024) Supplement to the DigCompEDU Framework https://aipioneers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/WP3_Supplement_to_the_DigCompEDU_English.pdf
Ning, Y., Zhang, C., Xu, B., Zhou, Y., & Wijaya, T. T. (2024). Teachers’ AI-TPACK: Exploring the Relationship between Knowledge Elements. Sustainability, 16(3), 978. https://doi.org/10.3390/su1603097
Sadykova, G., & Kayumova, A. (2025). AI-Powered Image and Audio Generators for Very Young EFL Learners. Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, 13(2), 1-24. doi: 10.30466/ijltr.2025.55564.2821
TED. (2023, September 21). The Secret to Successfully Pitching an Idea | The Way We Work, a TED series [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0hVIH3EnlQ
Vigna-Taglianti, J. (2024). AI-generated Images as a Teaching Tool in Foreign Language Acquisition. Technology and Language, 5(3), 85-105. https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2024.03.07
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