The Educator's Guide to Claude

Three principles that shape this guide

Before the how, a word on the why. Anyone can list Claude's features. Few guides take a position on what the tool is actually for — and what it is not for. This one does. Three principles sit behind every recommendation in the pages that follow.

The teacher is the expert

Claude is a tool. You are the teacher. The tool does not set the learning goals. It does not know your students. It does not understand the pedagogical choices you have made and why. You do. Every output Claude produces passes through your professional judgment before it reaches a classroom. This is not a nice idea — it is the working rule.

Your knowledge, your experience, your discernment: these are what make any AI output actually useful. If you understand differentiation deeply, Claude becomes a force multiplier. If you don't, no AI will fill the gap. The tool amplifies what you already bring; it does not replace it.

Do the fundamentals better

The temptation with new technology is always to do new things — escape rooms, virtual reality excursions, gamified everything. Most of it is noise. The real opportunity is quieter. It is to do the evidence-based fundamentals more often and more consistently than you currently can.

Retrieval practice. Vocabulary work. Text differentiation. Sentence stems. Worked examples. Formative feedback. These are the practices the research keeps pointing to, and the practices teachers have always said they would use more often — if they had the time. Claude gives you the time. What used to take ninety minutes of preparation now takes five. That is not flashy. It is transformative in the only sense that matters: students learn more.

Include every student

Every classroom has students on the margins. The EAL student who needs key vocabulary pre-taught to access the text everyone else is reading. The student with a learning difficulty who needs the same content at a simplified reading age. The advanced student who is coasting because the work is not stretching them. Meeting all of these students, every lesson, has always been the right thing to do — and has always been too time-consuming to do consistently.

Claude lowers that time cost to the point where it becomes realistic. Differentiated texts in five minutes. Translated key terms. Scaffolded instructions. Audio versions of written tasks. This is not about doing more. It is about doing what matters, for the students who need it most, at a cadence the research has recommended for decades.

Getting Started

If you have never opened Claude before, start here. By the end of this part you will have an account, you will know how to write a prompt that does not waste your time, and you will have five concrete things you can use this week.

Creating your account

Go to claude.ai and sign up. You can use a Google or Apple sign-in, or register with any email address. Most teachers I work with use a personal email rather than a school one, because school IT systems often classify new services in ways that slow approvals. Using your personal email does not put your school at risk; using school data with Claude does, and we will get to that shortly.

The free tier is genuinely useful. You get Claude Sonnet, memory across conversations, web search, file uploads and file creation, and the mobile apps. Most of this guide works on the free tier. Start there. Upgrade when you find yourself running out of usage in the middle of a productive session — not before.

Web (claude.ai)

Fastest start. No install, no permissions, no IT ticket. Open the browser, sign in, start typing.

Desktop app (macOS and Windows)

Recommended for daily use. The desktop app runs outside your browser, which means you are not fighting thirty open tabs when you want to think. It also happens to be where Cowork lives on paid plans.

Mobile (iOS and Android)

Install both. Voice input is the hidden productivity feature. A ten-minute walk between classrooms is long enough to dictate a draft parent email, a feedback summary, or a rough lesson outline. You edit the text later, on a proper keyboard.

Your first prompt — the RTF anatomy

Most prompts fail not because the model is bad, but because the prompt is too vague. A useful prompt has three parts: Role, Task, Format. Three letters: R, T, F.

R — Role

Tell Claude who to be. The more specific the role, the more grounded the output. "A primary teacher" is weaker than "an experienced Year 4 literacy teacher in a state school with a wide range of reading ages".

T — Task

State exactly what you want done. Not "help me with a quiz" — that leaves too much to guess. Instead: "Create a ten-minute retrieval practice quiz on persuasive techniques covered in the past three lessons."

F — Format

Specify the shape of the answer. Number of questions, mix of question types, word count, heading structure, whether you want an answer key. Format is where most first drafts go wrong and most fixes get made — so say it up front.

Put the three together and you have a prompt that works on the first try and gets better on the second. Iteration is part of the skill: Claude's first output is a draft, not a deliverable. Read it, tell Claude what to change, and run again.

Bad → Better → Best

Same topic, three drafts of the same prompt. Each draft gets more precise about what Claude needs to know. The output quality climbs with the specificity of the prompt — not with the length of it.

Act as an experienced Year 6 Science teacher.

Task: Write a one-page explanation of the water cycle suitable for a mixed-ability Year 6 class. Include the four core stages and one real-world example for each.

Format:
- 250–300 words total
- Plain language, short sentences (≤15 words where possible)
- One vocabulary box with five key terms and child-friendly definitions
- End with three retrieval questions (two recall, one application)

Pitch: students reading at Year 5 to Year 7 level.

The Best prompt is not longer for its own sake. Every word earns a place by reducing what Claude has to guess.

Five quick wins for this week

Don't try to use Claude for everything at once. Get good at one task, get it into your routine, then add the next.

1 · Differentiate a reading passage at three levels

Paste a passage you are planning to use. Ask Claude to produce three versions of it at reading ages two years below, at-level, and two years above, preserving the core ideas and keeping the shared vocabulary intact. The whole job takes five minutes instead of forty, and every student in your room reads about the same subject on the same day.

Extra example: a Year 7 geography teacher I work with uses this every week on UK newspaper articles about current events. One article becomes three versions for three reading groups within fifteen minutes, and current affairs finally enter the classroom on time rather than a term late.

2 · Build a retrieval practice quiz

Retrieval practice works. What stops most teachers from running it every lesson is the time cost of generating fresh questions. Claude removes that cost. Give it the topic, the year level, the mix of question types, and the number of questions. Ask for an answer key at the end. You will have a usable draft inside two minutes.

Extra example: a head of department I coached uses this to produce a five-question low-stakes quiz for the opening five minutes of every lesson across her department. The quizzes are consistent, draw from prior content, and take her ten minutes a week to generate for an entire team.

3 · Draft a parent communication

You know what you want to say. Writing it well, professionally, and without falling into the six awkward sentences you have used before is what takes time. Give Claude the context — what happened, what you want the parent to know, what tone you want to strike — and let it produce a first draft. Edit. Send.

Extra example: use Claude to draft a sensitive email about a student's behaviour, then ask for the same message in two alternative tones (firmer, warmer). The three versions give you calibration before you commit to the one you will send.

4 · Summarise a long policy document

Teachers are drowning in policy documents they do not have time to read properly. Upload the PDF and ask Claude for the three things you actually need to know, the parts that affect you directly, and any deadlines buried in the document.

Extra example: when your district issues an updated assessment policy, upload the new version and the previous version. Ask Claude for a side-by-side of what has changed. You now have a comparison your colleagues do not.

5 · Create a lesson starter

The first five minutes of a lesson matter more than most of the next fifty. Ask Claude for three starter options in different formats — a vocabulary warm-up, a sentence-completion task, and a think-pair-share prompt — and pick whichever fits your class.

Extra example: a primary teacher I work with generates her starters a term at a time, in bulk. One evening produces twelve weeks of starters across her subject rotation. She then edits and files them, freeing up her Sunday evenings for the rest of the term.

Part 1 — Before you move on

1. I have created a Claude account and signed in at claude.ai
2. I know which surface (Chat, Cowork, Code, Mobile) is which, and which require a paid plan
3. I have written at least three prompts using the RTF anatomy — Role, Task, Format
4. I have iterated on at least one prompt — improving it through two rounds of feedback — for a real task
5. I have completed at least one of the five quick wins for a lesson or task this week
6. I have decided which categories of data are acceptable to share with Claude, and which are not

Scale & Lead

Part 3 is for educators who want to do more than save personal time. It is for those building a system — for their classroom, their team, their school. The tools and patterns here change what a single educator can take on.

Cowork — agentic workflows without the terminal

Cowork is a tab inside Claude Desktop on paid plans. Anthropic's own description is worth quoting: "Claude Cowork uses the same agentic architecture that powers Claude Code, now accessible within Claude Desktop and without opening the terminal. Instead of responding to prompts one at a time, Claude can take on complex, multi-step tasks and execute them on your behalf."

The practical difference: in Chat, you run one prompt, wait for the response, then decide the next step. In Cowork, you describe a multi-step task and Claude works through it, using tools as it goes, until the task is done. You stay in the loop — you can watch, interrupt, and redirect — but you are not doing the manual orchestration.

When to reach for Cowork instead of Chat

Cowork earns its keep on tasks that would otherwise require you to write three, five, or ten chained prompts yourself. For example:

• "Plan a five-week unit on photosynthesis. Include weekly learning objectives, one lesson outline per week, a formative assessment in week three, a summative project brief for week five, and a single-page parent-facing overview."
• "Draft a parent newsletter for this month. Pull the events from the attached school calendar, add a short note from the head teacher, a celebration of three students' achievements, and a reminder about the upcoming assessment week. Format as one printable A4 page."
• "Produce a consistent set of differentiated resources for the Year 9 Industrial Revolution unit: one simplified reading, one at-level reading, one extension reading, a vocabulary sheet with child-friendly definitions, and a retrieval quiz, for each of the four lesson topics."

Each of these would have been a morning of chained prompts in Chat. In Cowork, each is a single request.

Custom Skills — your reusable teaching agents

Skills are small, named instructions that Claude loads when it recognises a relevant task. You build one, give it a name, and from then on any conversation where the task fits triggers the Skill automatically. It is a way of teaching Claude the specific patterns you use, so you do not have to explain them every time.

Consider a Skill called differentiate-three-levels. You write it once. It describes exactly how you want any piece of text rewritten at a simpler reading age, at-level, and an extended version, with shared bolded key vocabulary and a glossary. From then on, every time you paste a text and ask "differentiate this", Claude applies the Skill exactly.

Another Skill candidate: parent-email-template. Your school's tone, your preferred structure, the standard sign-off. Written once, invoked whenever.

The rule of three. If you find yourself explaining the same pattern to Claude more than three times, it is time to make it a Skill.

You don't have to build every Skill from scratch. A thriving open community publishes high-quality education Skills on GitHub — for differentiation, retrieval practice, feedback, parent communication, and more. Download the ones that fit your work and install them into your Claude. Gareth Manning's claude-education-skills repository is a good starting point; a GitHub search for claude skills turns up many more.

Claude Code — a glimpse

For most teachers, Claude Code is not a daily tool. But it is worth knowing it exists, because it is where Claude becomes most powerful, and where your school's IT staff or curriculum lead may want to spend time.

Claude Code is a command-line tool that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Claude can read and write files on your computer, run programs, and execute multi-step plans across your filesystem. Three examples of what it unlocks:

• Bulk-renaming and reorganising a folder of hundreds of classroom resources to match a new naming convention, in minutes rather than an afternoon
• Building a small website for a class project, using only plain-language descriptions of what the site should do
• Automating the production of a year's worth of differentiated worksheets from a curriculum document and a rubric

If your school has a tech-curious teacher, a curriculum administrator with a technical streak, or an IT lead, point them at Claude Code.

Whole-school rollout — training, policy, governance

For school leaders considering Claude beyond personal use, three things matter more than anything else: how you train, what you codify, and who is accountable.

Training

Most schools default to the one-off workshop: a visiting expert, two hours on a staff day, a slide deck circulated afterwards. Two weeks later, nothing has changed in classrooms. This pattern does not work for AI any better than it works for any other professional learning.

What works is a small working group that meets regularly — once a fortnight for a term is enough — where staff bring real tasks, learn together, and document the patterns that work in the school's specific context. The group is facilitated by a teacher or leader who is one step ahead, not three.

Policy

Every school using AI needs a written AI policy. Not aspirational, not abstract, but specific enough that a staff member facing a real situation can look up what to do.

Governance

Someone owns AI in the school. It can be a single leader or a small team, but a clear owner is non-negotiable. Without one, responsibility diffuses and decisions drift.

What good looks like in the first 90 days

Days 0–30: Name the owner. Run a staff-wide baseline survey of current AI use. Draft version 0.1 of the policy. Identify three teachers willing to be early adopters.

Days 31–60: Early adopters run pilot workflows. Working group meets fortnightly. Policy goes to version 0.2 based on real pilot learnings.

Days 61–90: Working group opens to any interested staff. Policy ratified at governor level. School documents its first three school-specific Skills. Plan for term-on-term review established.

Ethics — when NOT to use Claude

Every tool tells you what it is for. Few tell you what it is not for. This section is the latter.

Hallucinations

Claude can produce content that sounds entirely plausible and is factually wrong. It is most prone to this on niche, technical, very recent, or numerically precise topics. You know your subject. Use that expertise to check everything before it reaches a student.

Data discipline

The rule from Part 2 repeats here, at the school level: decide in advance which categories of data are acceptable to share with Claude and which are not. Apply the same discipline to giving Claude access to folders and connected services. Cowork, Claude Code, and MCP integrations can reach into your filesystem, your email, your cloud storage. Only grant access to folders and tools that contain data you would be comfortable sharing in a chat. Treat folder access the way you would treat handing someone the key to a filing cabinet: only when necessary, only to the specific drawer, and never the whole cabinet by default.

Automating the wrong things

The worst use of AI in education is not cheating. It is teachers using AI to produce work that should not exist, for students who use AI to complete it, for teachers who use AI to mark it. Before you ask Claude to help, ask: is this task genuinely worth doing? Is it the kind of work I should be doing myself?

The formation question

Not every task should be outsourced — even when it could be. Writing, thinking, planning, reflecting are not only tasks. They are how teachers grow as professionals. If AI does all your thinking, you stop developing. Use AI for the mechanical. Keep the meaningful.

Prompt library

Twenty-five prompts you can copy, paste, and adapt. Click any title to expand. Click Copy to put the prompt on your clipboard.

For teachers

Act as an experienced [year level] [subject] teacher in a mixed-ability classroom.

Task: Below this prompt is a reading passage. Produce three versions of it — at reading ages [age − 2], [at-level age], and [age + 2] — preserving the core ideas and keeping the six bolded key terms identical across all three versions.

Format: Label each version clearly. 150–250 words per version. Plain language in the simplified version; extended vocabulary in the advanced version.

[paste reading passage here]

Act as an experienced [year level] [subject] teacher.

Task: Create a [10]-minute retrieval practice quiz on [topic], covering material from the past [three] lessons.

Format:
- [5] multiple-choice questions (four options each)
- [5] short-answer questions
- Mixed difficulty
- Answer key at the end with brief explanations for each answer

Act as an experienced [year level] [subject] teacher.

Task: Below are [8] de-identified student responses to the same task. Identify (1) the three recurring strengths, (2) the three recurring misconceptions, and (3) the single highest-leverage thing I should teach next. Do not comment on any individual student — aggregate only.

Format: Three numbered sections, bullet points under each.

[paste de-identified responses]

Act as an experienced [subject] teacher.

Task: Produce a four-level rubric for a [year level] [assessment type, e.g. persuasive essay]. Assess [criterion 1], [criterion 2], [criterion 3], and [criterion 4].

Format:
- Single-page table
- Four levels: Emerging, Developing, Secure, Extending
- One descriptor per criterion per level, in student-facing language
- Include one example of what "Secure" work looks like at the end

Draft a short email to parents of [year level] students about [topic].

Tone: professional, warm, clear — no jargon. Assume parents are busy.

Format: two short paragraphs plus a closing sentence. Include a line reassuring parents of any support available to students who need it. Sign off: "Kind regards, [my name]".

Context:
[1–3 sentences about what happened or what parents need to know]

Rewrite the reading passage below for students with a reading age of [age]. Preserve every factual claim. Shorten sentences (≤15 words where possible). Replace low-frequency vocabulary with more accessible alternatives except for the bolded key terms, which must remain.

[paste original passage]

Produce a vocabulary list for [topic] for [year level] students. Include [10] key terms. For each term provide: a child-friendly definition, a sentence showing the term used in context, and one question that checks understanding.

Format: table with four columns — Term · Definition · Example · Check question.

Act as an experienced [subject] teacher.

Task: Produce three exit-ticket options for today's lesson on [topic]. Each option should take no more than 3 minutes to complete.

Format: (1) a two-question recall check, (2) a one-sentence explanation prompt, (3) a single "what's one thing you're still unsure about?" reflection prompt. Label each clearly.

Act as an experienced [year level] [subject] teacher.

Task: Produce a full 60-minute lesson plan on [topic]. Lesson objective: [objective]. Prior knowledge: students have covered [X, Y, Z].

Format:
- 5-minute starter (retrieval or engagement)
- 10-minute teacher explanation with one worked example
- 25-minute independent or paired practice, differentiated at three levels
- 10-minute review / check for understanding
- 5-minute exit ticket
- Include one Watch Out: a likely misconception and how to address it
- Include one Stretch: an extension task for advanced students

Produce three debate motions suitable for [year level] students on the topic of [topic]. For each motion, provide:
- A one-sentence statement of the motion
- Three key points for the "for" side
- Three key points for the "against" side
- One counter-argument each side should be ready to answer
- One piece of evidence or example each side can use

Pitch: age-appropriate, not offensive, enough substance to sustain a 20-minute discussion.

For school leaders

Below are the agenda and any pre-reads for tomorrow's staff meeting. Produce a one-page brief for me (the chair) covering:

1. The key decisions to be made, in order of importance
2. Time allocations I should target for each item
3. Two or three questions I should anticipate from staff per item, and a short response for each
4. Suggested follow-up actions depending on how each decision lands

[paste agenda and pre-reads]

Produce a first draft of a school policy on [topic].

Context: [2–3 sentences on the problem the policy addresses, the stakeholders, and any regulatory framework]

Format:
- Purpose (one paragraph)
- Scope (who and what the policy applies to)
- Key principles (3–5 bullet points)
- Specific procedures (numbered steps)
- Review cycle (how often, by whom)
- No more than two A4 pages

Voice: clear, accessible to non-specialists, avoids jargon.

Draft this month's parent newsletter for [school name]. Use the attached calendar, head teacher's message draft, and list of student achievements.

Format:
- Single printable A4 page
- Warm, not corporate, tone
- Sections: Head teacher's message, This month's highlights, Important dates, Celebrations
- Keep calendar events factual; weave the head teacher's message into Highlights

[attach sources]

Below are my lesson observation notes from [n] observations this term. Identify the three recurring areas of strength across the department and the three recurring areas for development. For each development area, suggest one concrete coaching conversation a team leader could open with.

Format: two numbered sections. Aggregate only — do not reference any individual teacher.

[paste observation notes]

Produce a first-draft AI-use policy for a [type of school] in [country]. The policy must address:

1. Which categories of student data may be shared with AI tools, and which may not
2. Staff use of AI for planning, communications, and assessment
3. Student use of AI in homework and assessment
4. What staff should do when a student is suspected of submitting AI-generated work
5. Review cycle and ownership

Format: two A4 pages maximum. Plain language. Written for staff, not lawyers.

Design a 90-minute staff CPD session on [topic], suitable for a mixed group of classroom teachers and middle leaders. The session should be practical — staff leave with something they can use on Monday.

Format:
- 15-minute framing (why this topic, why now)
- 30-minute input with one worked example
- 30-minute structured activity in small groups
- 15-minute share-back and action planning

Include: discussion questions, one piece of pre-reading (link or brief), and the single concrete action every staff member is asked to commit to by the next meeting.

Draft a first-response communication for parents regarding [incident]. Assume (1) the school's priority is student safety, (2) transparency is essential, and (3) we do not yet have all the facts.

Format: one email. Clear, calm, factual. Avoid speculation. State what we know, what we are doing, and when parents will hear more. No legalistic language. Sign off: "With care, [head teacher name]".

Produce this week's homework for [year level] [subject]. Total time students should spend: [n] minutes. Topic: [topic] from [lesson numbers].

Format:
- 3–5 questions or tasks of varying difficulty
- At least one retrieval question from prior content
- At least one application task that extends today's learning
- Clear instructions a parent can read and understand
- Answer key / success criteria on a separate section

Universal

I'd like you to remember some things about me, so you can be more useful in future conversations:

I am a [role, e.g. Year 8 English teacher] at a [type of school] in [country]. I teach [n] classes of around [n] students. My teaching context is [mixed ability / selective / specific curriculum]. I value [evidence-based practice / creativity / specific pedagogy].

My preferences for outputs:
- Keep things concise unless I ask for depth
- Use [British / American] English spelling
- Classroom-ready outputs — minimal editing required
- If a task involves student data, ask me to confirm it has been de-identified before proceeding

Please confirm you've saved this context.

I'm uploading a [policy document / curriculum document / research paper / other]. Give me:

1. A one-paragraph summary (what is this document and what does it want?)
2. The three things that affect me directly as a [role]
3. Any deadlines mentioned in the document
4. Any contradictions with [another source / my current practice / a previous version] I should flag
5. Questions I should ask before acting on this

Format: numbered sections, bullet points where useful.

Below is a description of an assessment task. Produce a four-level rubric for it, using Emerging / Developing / Secure / Extending as the levels. Identify the three to five most important criteria to assess, and write a student-facing descriptor for each criterion at each level.

Format: single-page table.

[paste assessment task]

Below is an outline of today's lesson. Produce (1) a one-minute verbal recap script I can read out in class, and (2) a three-question exit ticket that checks the key takeaways.

Format:
- Recap: 4–6 sentences, conversational, captures the core idea
- Exit ticket: one recall, one explanation, one reflection

[paste lesson outline]

For the reading passage below, produce a set of comprehension questions at three levels:

- 3 retrieval questions (facts directly stated in the text)
- 3 inference questions (conclusions drawn from the text)
- 3 evaluation questions (judgments about the text or its implications)

Format: three numbered sections. Include an answer key at the end.

[paste passage]

Help me prepare for a meeting with [parent name]'s parents about [topic — e.g. progress, behaviour concern, celebration].

Context: [2–3 sentences about the student and the reason for the meeting]

Produce:
1. Three talking points I want to make, in order
2. Two questions I should ask the parents
3. One concrete next step I can propose
4. One anticipated concern from parents and a prepared response

Keep it focused — 20-minute meeting.

I've just been given responsibility for [task, role, or area]. Explain what I need to understand, in plain language, assuming no prior expertise.

Format:
- The three things I must understand before I do anything
- The two most common mistakes new people in this role make
- One concrete action I should take in my first week
- One concrete action I should take in my first month
- What "good" looks like after six months

Avoid jargon. If a term is unavoidable, define it in a sentence.