Prompt details

Tested on

Claude Opus 5.5

Length

543 words · 4 fill-ins

Example input

[Subject, grade and unit length]: Grade 7 life science. Unit: Ecosystems (interactions, energy and change). 3 weeks, 5 periods a week, 50 minutes each. The Friday of week 2 is lost to a school assembly, so I have 14 lessons. The next unit starts straight after, so the summative has to fit inside these 14 lessons.

[Standards or curriculum outcomes]: MS-LS2-1: Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem. MS-LS2-2: Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems. MS-LS2-3: Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.

[Class needs]: 28 students, mixed ability, work well in groups of 4. 4 English learners: 2 Spanish speakers at WIDA level 2 (speak in short phrases, read best with pictures), 1 Arabic speaker at level 3, 1 Vietnamese speaker at level 4. 3 students with IEPs for reading: text read aloud, 1.5x time on tests. About 6 students read well above grade level and finish early. Last unit was cells and photosynthesis basics. They know plants make food from sunlight, but many still say plants get their food from the soil.

[Resources and limits]: 1:1 Chromebooks with Google Classroom, a projector. A small pond and a wild patch on the school grounds (10 minutes to walk there and back). 8 sets of hand lenses. No lab budget this term. Textbook chapter "Ecosystems", pages 112 to 148. Printing up to 4 pages per student per week.

Example output

Grade 7 Ecosystems Unit Plan: Who Eats, Who Needs, What Changes

1. Unit at a glance

Standards (as given)

MS-LS2-1: Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
MS-LS2-2: Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.
MS-LS2-3: Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.

Goals

G1. Students can use data from graphs and tables to explain how a change in resources (food, water, space, light) affects individual organisms and the size of a population. *(MS-LS2-1)*
G2. Students can identify competition, predation and mutualism. They can predict, with reasons, how organisms will interact and how one change spreads through ecosystems in different places. *(MS-LS2-2)*
G3. Students can build a food web model that shows energy flowing from the sun through producers, consumers and decomposers, with energy lost at each step. *(MS-LS2-3)*
G4. Students can model how matter cycles between living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem. This includes the fact that plants build most of their mass from carbon dioxide in the air and from water, not from soil. *(MS-LS2-3)*

Essential questions

1. Why do populations grow and shrink?

2. A pond, a desert and an ocean look nothing alike. What patterns do they share?

3. Where does the energy go, and where does the matter go?

Key vocabulary (12): ecosystem, population, resource, limiting factor, producer, consumer, decomposer, food web, competition, predation, mutualism, matter cycle

Misconceptions to watch for

Misconception	Where the plan tackles it
Plants get their food and mass from the soil.	Probed in L1. Tackled in L10 with van Helmont's willow data. Revisited in L11, L13 and the summative.
Food chain arrows mean "eats", so they point from predator to prey.	L5. Fix-it warm-ups in L6 and L8.
Energy is recycled like matter, or matter and energy are the same thing.	L9 (energy budget) and L11 (two arrow styles: energy vs matter).
Removing one species only affects what it eats and what eats it.	L7 and L8 (change cards traced two or more links away).

Claude Opus 5.5

Unit Plan – Unit plan prompt for ChatGPT and Claude

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Claude Opus 5.5

This prompt plans a full teaching unit. Paste the subject, length, standards, class needs and resources; you get goals, a summative with a rubric outline, every lesson with a check, differentiation and a prep list.

What you get

Unit goals, essential questions, key vocabulary and the misconceptions to watch for, each tied to a lesson
A summative assessment with a rubric outline that checks every goal
Every lesson in a table, with its formative check and what to do next day if many students miss it
Differentiation by week, a timed first lesson and a prep checklist

How to use it

1
Give the real limits
Count the lessons you actually have after trips, tests and assemblies, and paste your standards word for word.
2
Read the sequence first
Check that the lessons build in an order that works for your class and that the summative tests only what you teach.
3
Plan each lesson from its row
Use each row as the start of a lesson plan, or follow up with "Write lesson 4 in detail" when you reach it.

Better results

Name the misconception your students really hold, such as "plants get their food from the soil", so the plan builds a lesson to tackle it.
Follow up with: "Write the student handout for the summative task" or "Write lesson 6 in full" once the sequence looks right.
If your school has a unit template, follow up with its headings and ask for the plan in that order.

Questions

Can ChatGPT write a unit plan?

Yes, ChatGPT can write a unit plan when you give it the subject, grade, number of lessons, your standards and your class's needs. It drafts goals, a lesson sequence and assessments quickly; you check the content is accurate and the pacing fits your class.

What is the best AI unit planner?

A capable chat assistant such as Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini plans a full unit from a detailed prompt, and teacher platforms such as MagicSchool add classroom tools. The detail you give about lessons, standards and students matters more than the tool.

Does an AI unit planner work with the Australian Curriculum?

Yes. Paste the content descriptions from the Australian Curriculum, or your state or national standards, exactly as written. The prompt quotes them as given and adds no codes you did not supply, so the plan stays true to your curriculum.

What is backward design in unit planning?

Backward design means planning from the end: first the goals, then the assessment that shows students reached them, then the lessons that get them there. This prompt plans that way, so every lesson serves a goal the summative checks.

Updated 8 Nov 2026