Worksheets, and three versions of them

The best use of your evening, and where it fails quietly

Making three versions of a worksheet by hand is about an hour. With AI it is roughly ten minutes of generating and fifteen of checking. That saved half hour is real, and for a tired teacher this is the most valuable thing on this course.

The checking is not optional. If you read nothing else here, read the last section.

Easier is not differentiated

Ask for “an easier version” and you get fewer questions, shorter sentences, simpler words. The student who could not do question 3 still cannot do question 3. You removed volume, not the barrier.

Real differentiation moves along one of three axes, and you have to name which one.

Support. Same question, same numbers, more scaffolding. A worked example above it. The first step done for them. The formula written out. A sentence starter.

Representation. Same idea, different form. A table instead of a paragraph. A number line. A diagram to label instead of a description to write.

Extension. Same context, deeper demand. Not more questions: a harder question about the same situation, so the whole class stays in one conversation.

What that looks like

Base question, Grade 6:

A shirt costs 800 rupees. The shop gives a 15% discount. What is the sale price?

Support version: identical numbers, scaffolded:

A shirt costs 800 rupees. The shop gives a 15% discount.

Step 1: 10% of 800 is ______

Step 2: 5% is half of that, so 5% is ______

Step 3: The discount is ______

Step 4: The sale price is ______

Extension: same shirt, harder thinking:

The shopkeeper paid 600 rupees for the shirt and wants to keep at least 120 rupees profit. What is the largest discount he can offer?

All three students are still discussing one shirt. That is the difference between differentiating a class and splitting it.

Put the axis in the prompt. “Rewrite this with the same numbers and a four-step scaffold; do not simplify the mathematics” gets you the middle version. “Make it easier” never will.

Distractors are where it earns its keep

In a multiple choice question the wrong options are the assessment. Three obviously silly options and one right one tests reading, not understanding.

So do not ask for “four options”. Ask for the errors:

Write four options: the correct answer, plus three wrong answers produced by these specific mistakes: adding instead of multiplying; forgetting to convert centimetres to metres; using the diameter where the radius is needed.

Now a wrong answer tells you what the student did, and the tally on your desk is a teaching plan for tomorrow.

Tell it where your students live

Unprompted it writes about baseball, yellow school buses and dollars. Give it the currency, the names, the market, the crops, the local transport. “Use Nigerian names and naira. The setting is a small provisions shop, not a supermarket.” It does this well and instantly. It just never does it unasked.

Work the sheet yourself

Fifteen minutes, before you print forty copies.

AI worksheets fail in a particular and dangerous way: confidently, and consistently within themselves. Word problems whose numbers do not resolve. Comprehension questions whose answer is not actually in the passage. A matching exercise where two items both fit the same answer. An answer key that contradicts its own question.

None of this is visible by reading it. You have to do it. If you are handing forty children a page and calling it their practice, it is worth the fifteen minutes.