Class 8 · Unit 3: Generative AI · Lesson 3.2 · 40 min
Writing with AI, honestly
The notice is beautifully written. The date is wrong, the school has no auditorium, and nobody promised refreshments.
Today you will: Check an AI's writing claim by claim · Correct it against real sources · Declare the help you had
Story
The school notice board has a new sheet on it:
"Dear parents, the Annual Science Exhibition will be held on Thursday, 14 August, in the school auditorium from 10 a.m. Refreshments will be served in the canteen."
Hiba reads it twice. The exhibition is on the 12th. The school has no auditorium — the exhibition is always in the hall. And nobody has ever served refreshments.
The office secretary shrugs. "I asked the computer to write it. It wrote it beautifully."
It did write it beautifully. Every wrong detail is in perfect English.
Watch
Honest help — — scan code 8.3.2 in the printed book.
Warm up your fingers
Skill: editing without the mouse, Term 2 (5 min)
- On typing.com, open the editing practice your teacher has set.
- Practise the four keys that make correcting fast: Ctrl+Z (undo), Ctrl+←/→ (jump a whole word), Home and End.
- You will use all four in today's activity, because you are correcting somebody else's text.
On the laptop
You need: LibreOffice Writer and Calc · ai-notice.txt · ai-explainer.txt · sources/ (the school calendar, a textbook page) · marking.ods — you're not using an AI tool today; you're checking one
Mission 1: Your mission
- ☐1
Open
ai-notice.txtand save it at once asnotice-checked.odt. - ☐2
Predict: how many of its facts will turn out wrong? Then underline every checkable claim — dates, times, places, numbers, names.
- ☐3
In
marking.ods, one row per claim: Claim · Source I checked · True / False / Can't tell · What it should say. "Can't tell" is a real answer. - ☐4
Correct the false claims in your copy and delete what can't be checked. Add: "Drafted with AI help. Checked and corrected by [name] against the school calendar on [date]."
- ☐5
Open
ai-explainer.txt. Find one thing it explains well and one it gets wrong or leaves out.
No laptop today?
Work from the printed notice and explainer: underline the claims, fill the marking table in your notebook, then rewrite the notice correctly and add the credit line by hand.
Now you know
- AI writing is fluent by design. Fluency isn't evidence.
- Check every claim against a source. Mark what no source settles as can't tell.
- Honest use has three parts: your thinking first · check everything · say what help you had.
- Handing in AI text as your own is plagiarism and there's no author to credit, only a tool to declare. Declaring costs nothing; hiding it costs trust.
🕌 From our heritage
Our scholarly tradition took the question "where did you get this?" extremely seriously. A student who had studied a book with a teacher was given an ijāzah, a written licence naming the teacher and the text, so that anyone could see exactly how the knowledge had reached them. Nobody thought this was shameful. It was the proof that the learning was real. Writing "drafted with AI help, checked by me" is the same instinct: say how the work reached the page.
Source: the ijāzah system of transmission, standard in Islamic scholarship from roughly the 9th century onward. See also Class 6, Unit 4, Lesson 6 on credit and copying.
Debate it
Two students hand in the same essay topic.
- Amina wrote her own draft, asked an AI to suggest better opening lines, chose one, checked her facts, and wrote at the bottom what help she used.
- Rafiq asked an AI to write the whole essay, read it once, and handed it in.
Both essays are good. Is the difference only about rules, or has one of them lost something? What has Rafiq not got that Amina has?
Check yourself — practice, not a test
1. Which of these count as honest use of AI help? (choose all)
- ○ Asking it to explain a topic, then writing your own answer
- ○ Handing in its text as your own work
- ○ Asking it to check your spelling, then checking its suggestions
- ○ Using it to plan, then saying so at the bottom of your work
2. If AI-written text is well written and confident, the facts in it are probably right.
- ○ True
- ○ False
3. Handing in someone else's words as your own is called ______.
4. You check an AI's claim and no source can settle it. You should write:
- ○ True, because it sounds right
- ○ False, because you could not find it
- ○ Can't tell, and leave the claim out
- ○ Nothing, and move on
5. Put honest use in order:
- 1. Ask AI for specific help
- 2. Check what it gives you against sources
- 3. Do your own thinking first
- 4. Say what help you used
Remember
Your thinking, AI's help, your check, your credit.