You can’t stop AI from answering most school assignments. But you can change what students have to do to complete them.
Most of the changes below rely on one of two moves: grounding the work in real-world evidence students have to gather themselves, or building in live exchange with another person. Here are five examples.
1. History: Investigate a local landmark
Instead of: Summarize an important historical event.
Try this: Ask students to investigate the history of a local building or monument. They compare sources such as plaques, local newspaper archives, old photographs, or interviews with longtime residents, then explain something they discovered that surprised them.
AI can offer general history. But local landmarks often have little online, so students have to go find the evidence and check it.
2. Literature: Defend an interpretation
Instead of: Describe the main character in a novel.
Try this: Ask students to pick a passage they found surprising or confusing and defend their interpretation with details from the text. Then, in class, have them respond to a classmate’s different reading of the same passage.
AI can produce literary analysis. It can’t stand in for a student answering a peer’s challenge in real time.
3. Science: Test a hypothesis
Instead of: Explain what affects plant growth.
Try this: Ask students to compare plant growth in sunny and shaded spots, record observations over time with dated photos or in-class check-ins, and explain what they found.
AI can suggest hypotheses and help analyze results. It can’t make the observations.
4. Civics: Find a real problem
Instead of: Write an essay about improving your community.
Try this: Ask students to identify a problem they’ve noticed at school or in their neighborhood. They gather evidence that it exists, identify who it affects, and propose a realistic solution.
AI can suggest problems and solutions. Students still have to find out what is actually happening where they live.
- English: Revisit your position
Instead of: Write an essay arguing for or against school uniforms.
Try this: Ask students to explain their initial position, examine evidence for the opposing view, and discuss it with a classmate. Their final submission explains whether their thinking changed, and why.
AI can argue both sides and even write a reflection. But a classroom discussion lets students engage with another person’s actual reasoning, and teachers can ask follow-up questions to see how students reached their conclusions.
The point isn’t to ban AI
AI can help with every one of these assignments. The opportunity is to connect schoolwork to evidence, observation, discussion, and decisions, not just to the production of an answer.
None of these assignments guarantees learning or proves a student worked independently. Teachers still need chances to ask questions, explore students’ reasoning, and assess what they understand.
We don’t need assignments AI can’t complete. We need learning experiences in which producing an answer is only part of the work.