Hi again,
It's late July. Kitchen table, iced coffee gone watery, school laptop open next to the grocery list. And you finally found it — one genuinely good passage for your first unit. The kind that actually fits what you're teaching.
Then you remember fourth period.
Three reading levels in one room. The version that stretches one kid buries another. So you open a blank doc and start retyping the passage... again. Shorter sentences this time. Then a third pass for your early readers. Same content, same questions, three documents, one evening gone.
Here's what I've decided after too many Julys like that: you already know exactly what each level needs. Differentiating isn't the hard part. The typing is the tax.
Last week we talked about handing the robot a whole job instead of one question at a time. This is that idea at the kitchen table: one worksheet in, three leveled versions out, about five minutes. Same core content, same questions. You're differentiating the material, not the expectations.
First, the mistake I almost made
The natural way to ask for this is to describe the kid. "I have a student with dyslexia who reads at about a second-grade level and..." Stop right there. That sentence is already about a child.
The AI doesn't need to know a single thing about who's reading. It needs to know the reading levels you teach. "Rewrite this at a 7th-grade level, two grades below, and an early-reader level" gets you the exact same output. No student ever gets described to a robot. Describe the reading level, never the reader.
One more look before you paste: make sure the worksheet itself is clean. No student name in the header, no school info, no example sentence built around a real kid in your room. Just the material. (If your worksheet is a PDF, copy the passage text out of it — the AI only needs the words, not the layout.) And your district's AI policy is still the final word — check it before you paste anything.
The whole job, in one prompt
You are an experienced special education teacher who differentiates instructional materials. Here is a worksheet or passage — it contains no student names or information about any student: [paste the text]. Rewrite it at three reading levels: (1) on grade level [e.g., 7th grade], (2) about two grade levels below, and (3) a simplified version for early readers. Keep the same core content and the same questions wherever possible — adjust the wording, not the rigor of the concept. Keep each version to about one page. Don't add any facts that aren't in the original.
That last line matters. You want the AI rewording your material, never inventing new material. If the original doesn't say it, the leveled versions shouldn't either.
Then read the easy version out loud
These three versions are drafts until you've checked them. Here's the honest part: when AI simplifies, it sometimes simplifies the idea instead of the wording. A cause-and- effect gets flattened into a "because" that isn't quite right, or the one vocabulary word your unit hinges on quietly disappears.
So read the simplest version out loud. Two minutes. You'll hear anything that drifted, and you're the professional who fixes it. The AI did the retyping; the judgment about what your students actually need — that part stays yours, along with everything else that lives in the IEP.
Differentiation was never the hard part. Retyping was. Hand the retyping to the robot and keep the part that's actually teaching.
The part nobody tells you
Yes, you get the evening back. But the real win is Monday's discussion.
When all three versions keep the same questions, every kid in fourth period is answering question 3. The student holding the early-reader version is in the same conversation as everyone else, because it is the same worksheet — same content, same questions, different on-ramp. Nobody's holding the page that looks like the "easy one." That's a kind of dignity you can't buy with an extra hour of typing.
Try it this week
Pick the one passage you were about to retype for fall. Run the prompt, read the simplest version out loud, fix what drifted, and file all three where August-you can find them. Five minutes now, and day one of school is already differentiated.
Bonus move: paste this whole issue into your AI and tell it, "Level my passage using these rules."
Then hit reply and tell me what you're rebuilding for fall — the unit or the material that eats your July. I'm picking future issues from your answers.
Talk soon,
Shaun
P.S. If you know a teacher spending this month retyping worksheets at their own kitchen table, forward this one to them. It might buy them an evening.
A quick but important note: this newsletter is for general educational and informational purposes only. I'm a special education teacher sharing time-saving ideas. The views here are my own and don't represent any school district or employer. I'm not a lawyer, and nothing here is legal, compliance, or professional advice. Always follow your district's and state's policies, especially on AI use and student privacy, and check with the right person in your district before acting on anything significant. You are the professional: review and finalize everything yourself. And never put student names or identifying details into any AI tool.