Creating Masterful Teacher Prompts — With Help from Prompt Maker

Despite advances in AI reasoning, experts continue to emphasize that the key to unlocking AI’s potential lies in well-crafted prompts.

It's not that the AI isn't smart enough—it's that we are still learning how to communicate with it in a way that aligns with our goals.

How many times have you asked ChatGPT for a teaching idea and gotten something way off the mark?

Fortunately, there are tools that can help teachers prompt skillfully and quickly. One of them is Prompt Maker, a ChatGPT-powered assistant that helps educators quickly and efficiently craft well-structured, grade-appropriate prompts.

The beauty of Prompt Maker GPT is that it applies expert-recommended prompt engineering principles, which align its responses with both pedagogical goals and the best practices of language models. (More on that later.)

However, like any tool, Prompt Maker GPT can be used poorly and fail to meet expectations. Before trying it, it's essential to know best practices for crafting effective prompts. That might strike you as ironic: Why do I need to learn how to prompt a prompt-making tool? Bottom line, if you provide Prompt Maker with key information, you’re more likely to get the help you seek.

Four Prompting Guidelines That Make a Difference

It’s a cliché, perhaps, but so often true: “garbage in, garbage out.” If you feed an AI chatbot with poor, incomplete, or inaccurate information, it will likely provide you with responses of poor quality. Fortunately, it’s relatively quick and straightforward to provide helpful information to Prompt Maker, enabling it to craft an effective and detailed prompt that meets your needs.

Below are four pivotal prompting guidelines that Prompt Maker follows to provide you with useful, precise, and pedagogically sound prompt inputs.

What you need to do is provide Prompt Maker with the necessary information to craft a prompt in accordance with recommended guidelines.

So, let’s look at the guidelines and the corresponding questions you should answer:

1. Assign the Right Role

An effective prompt starts by identifying who the AI should pretend to be. It gives the AI a clear identity to help it adopt the right tone, vocabulary, and instructional approach.

This prompt doesn’t identify a role:

"Explain how to divide fractions."

This prompt identifies a role:

"Act like a 6th-grade math teacher.”

To help Prompt Maker assign the right role and adopt the right tone, vocabulary, and instructional approach, answer the following questions:

What is the grade level?

What is the subject/topic?

Your answers to these questions will tailor vocabulary, tone, and depth.

2. Define the Task

Vague prompts yield vague results. Prompt Maker works best when you provide specifics about what you want.

This prompt doesn’t help define the task:

"Help me teach metaphors."

This prompt helps define the task:

"Act like a 7th-grade ESL teacher. Define metaphors using kid-friendly language for ELLs. Provide real-life examples. Include a short in-class activity."

Clarity of purpose helps lead to clarity of output. In this example, the AI recognizes that the teacher requires appropriate ELL language, relevant examples, and a concise exercise.

Answer these two questions and help tailor Prompt Maker’s response to your teaching task:

What is your main instructional goal or learning objective?

Any student needs or teaching constraints? (time constraints, limited tech, ELL, other)

Your answers help focus Prompt Maker on the learning outcome and help it adapt to the teaching context. Jot your answers down.

3. Structure Prompt Components

An effective learning prompt often involves numbered steps or explicit instructions to scaffold the AI's response. This aligns with what's known as "Chain-of-Thought prompting," and it's widely recommended.

This prompt encourages logical flow and instructional depth:

1: Tell a short story about a drop of water named Wally going through the water cycle.
2: Summarize the four stages.
3: Have students answer discussion questions.

Even if you’re not sure what steps or instructions you might want to include, partially answering the questions below can help develop logical or step-by-step prompts.

What are the key components or steps you want included? (Engage activity, direct instruction, discussion, etc.)

What order would you like to see them appear? (If possible, outline the steps.)

When your answers are complete or partial, jot them down.

4. Set Format Expectations

Tell the AI the formats you seek and how you want the output formatted. For example, would you like instructions for an activity, generated in bullet points? Would you like a series of examples, formatted in a list?

Letting Prompt Maker know can save you time and give you more consistent results.

So, answer the following:

What teaching formats do you want the AI to generate? (full lesson plan, lab, extended activity, etc.)

How would you like them formatted? (bullet points, table, etc.)

Don’t worry if you’re unsure which teaching formats to include. Prompt Maker will suggest formats.

Simple Prompt-to-Prompt Template (Putting it all together)

Let’s put all your answers together in a short prompt you can use with Prompt Maker.

You can use this fill-in-the-blank prompt to minimize typing but still maintain clarity:

Craft me an effective prompt. I teach [grade level + subject]. My goal is for students to [learning goal]. I want help creating [formats] about [topic] and organizing them in a logical manner. Adapt it for [student need, if any].

Note: You can paste any curriculum or texts directly. If you’re teaching from a textbook or curriculum standard, paste it directly into the prompt using quotes. Quotes signal to the AI that you are including source material that is not part of the instructions.

Prompt Maker in Action - Example 1

Let’s compare examples — bad and good — using Prompt Maker:

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Teacher A prompts: "Help me explain tariffs."

Actual Output from Prompt Maker:

A tariff is a tax that a country places on goods imported from other countries. The purpose of tariffs is usually to make foreign goods more expensive, so that people are encouraged to buy products made domestically.

For example, if the U.S. adds a tariff on steel from another country, it means that companies importing that steel must pay more, which might raise prices for consumers or make U.S.-made steel more competitive.

Tariffs can help protect domestic industries, but they can also lead to higher prices for consumers and trade wars if other countries respond with their own tariffs.

Overall, tariffs are one of the tools governments use in economic and trade policy.

The Teacher A prompt-to-prompt provides no grade-level adaptation, no historical context, no activities, visuals, or structure, and is far from classroom-ready.

Teacher B prompts: "Craft me an effective prompt. I teach 11th-grade U.S. history. My goal is for students to understand tariffs in a historical perspective. I want help creating historical comparisons about the impact of tariffs economically, organizing the information in a logical manner. Adapt it for AP students.”

Actual Output from Prompt Maker

Act like an experienced 11th-grade AP U.S. History teacher. Your goal is to help students understand tariffs through a historical lens, with a focus on their economic impact and political consequences. Your students are preparing for the AP exam, so they need practice making historical comparisons and analyzing cause and effect.

Follow these step-by-step instructions to generate a classroom-ready historical comparison resource:

Step 1: Create a comparison table that includes at least four major tariff policies in U.S. history. Each row should represent one tariff and contain the following columns:

• Name of the tariff

• Year passed

• Purpose of the tariff

• Immediate economic effects

• Long-term consequences

• Public and political reactions

Include these specific tariffs:

• Tariff of Abominations (1828)

• Morrill Tariff (1861)

• Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930)

• Trump-era tariffs (2018–2020)

Step 2: After the table, include a short paragraph explaining one historical pattern or shift students should notice when comparing these tariffs (e.g., increased protectionism during crises).

Step 3: Provide two AP-style discussion or essay prompts that encourage students to analyze continuity and change or causation based on the chart.

Step 4: Suggest one formative activity (e.g., a Think-Pair-Share or DBQ prep task) that a teacher can use with this chart.

Take a deep breath and work on this problem step-by-step.

Note that the Prompt Maker prompt includes grade-appropriate, content-rich, and pedagogically sound material. It also generates higher-order content, ready for advanced tasks, not just surface-level summaries. In this instance, the teacher might be unsure of what historical content to include and how to organize it, but this prompt provides specific details and a clear direction.

**If you want to see the actual lesson plan that ChatGPT developed in response to this prompt, you can see it here.

Prompt Maker in Action - Example 2

Teacher A prompts: “Help me explain Spanish Imperative usage and construction.”

Teacher A: Actual Output:

The Spanish Imperative is used to give commands or make requests.
There are different forms depending on whether the command is formal or informal, and whether it is affirmative or negative.

Examples:

• Affirmative tú command: Habla (Speak)

• Negative tú command: No hables (Don’t speak)

• Formal command: Hable (Speak - usted)

The verbs often change based on their endings (-ar, -er, -ir), and irregular verbs like ser, ir, and tener have unique forms.

Again, no grade-level adaptation, no historical context, no activities, visuals. And not classroom-ready.

Teacher B prompts: “Craft me an effective prompt. I teach 9th grade Spanish I and my goal is for students to practice the use of the Spanish Imperative so they learn when and how to use it. I want help creating practice scenarios for students --written, verbal, print, or digital formats-- including interactive activities.”

Teacher B: Upgraded Prompt for Lesson Activity Generation

Act like an experienced 9th-grade Spanish I teacher. Your students are just beginning to learn the Spanish Imperative mood, and your goal is for them to practice using it accurately and confidently. Focus on helping students understand when and how to use affirmative and negative tú commands, as well as formal (usted) and nosotros forms.

You are designing a set of engaging, student-friendly practice activities in multiple formats — written, verbal, print, and digital — to support a 50-minute lesson. Include real-life scenarios where these commands would be used, and make sure activities accommodate different learning styles.

Follow these step-by-step instructions:

Step 1: Create a brief warm-up activity that introduces or reviews the imperative forms using familiar verbs. Make it interactive, such as a group mini-quiz or board work.

Step 2: Design two role-play scenarios where students can use commands naturally — one informal (tú), one formal (usted). Describe the context, roles, and example commands to be used.

Step 3: Develop one written task where students convert infinitive verbs into imperative forms and apply them in short commands related to daily life or school situations. Include a simple answer key.

Step 4: Suggest one digital or kinesthetic activity, such as a drag-and-drop task, “Simón dice,” or movement-based game that reinforces the command forms.

Step 5: Create an exit ticket prompt where students write 3 original commands they might hear or give in a household or classroom context. Include a sentence starter to support struggling students.

Take a deep breath and work on this problem step-by-step.

It would take a teacher a lot of time and effort on their own to craft a prompt this specific and detailed. But with Prompt Maker it can be accomplished quickly.

**To view the actual lesson plan that ChatGPT developed, please go here.

Final Thoughts: Ideas and Iteration

Prompt Maker GPT doesn’t just automate structure—it sparks ideas. As it walks through the prompt-building process, it subtly incorporates the four key prompting guidelines described above. Along the way, it suggests creative instructional approaches you may not have thought of—storytelling, timelines, debates, formative quizzes, visual analogies, or scaffolded discussions.

That is not to say you will always be happy with the first result. Rarely is a prompt perfect on the first try. So, iterate. Ask Prompt Maker to improve its own prompts. It can upgrade good ideas into better ones, if you ask. Prompt Maker GPT is both a coach and a collaborator. It models high-quality prompting and is ready to respond to your feedback.

Prompting well takes experimentation, reflection, and refinement—just like teaching. Prompt Maker doesn’t usurp that responsibility from the teacher, but it provides specific ideas and direct strategies, so you don’t have to stumble through prompting. You can build prompts that are clear, scaffolded, aligned to your goals, and ready to adapt to your students.

So, the next time ChatGPT gives you something off-base, pause. Reframe. Prompt again—and prompt better.

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