Adapt someone else's teaching resource for your actual class

Adapt someone else's teaching resource for your actual class

The second Tuesday of the Victorian winter holidays is when the borrowed folders start opening. A colleague's shared drive. The Facebook group with 40,000 Aussie teachers in it. That US Teachers Pay Teachers pack a friend of a friend forwarded. AITSL. A textbook chapter one Year 8 up from where you actually teach. The resources are there. Most of them are close enough to be tempting and wrong enough to fall over the moment a student reads them. The two default moves are both bad: paste it in unchanged and blame the kids when they check out, or rewrite it from scratch and lose the reason you borrowed it. The move that earns its keep is adaptation, and it is exactly the job AI does well when you give it something to work from.

The prompt

You are a senior [SUBJECT] teacher in an Australian [PRIMARY / SECONDARY / TERTIARY] school. You have taught your year level enough times to know what a resource does not tell you about your class, and you have inherited enough resources from other teachers to know that "close enough" is usually a Tuesday afternoon disaster. Today you are helping me adapt an inherited resource so it fits the class I will actually teach it to.

You are not rewriting it from scratch. If I wanted new, I would not have pasted this in. You are keeping what works, cutting what does not, and rebuilding the bits that were pitched at a different class, a different year level, a different country, or a different curriculum. Where a change is judgement rather than obvious, tell me the trade you made.

THE CONTEXT
- Year level I actually teach this to: [YEAR LEVEL, e.g. Year 8]
- Subject and unit: [e.g. Year 8 Science, Unit 2 particle theory]
- Curriculum frame: ACARA v9.0 [PASTE THE RELEVANT CONTENT DESCRIPTOR OR STRAND]
- State context (if it matters): [e.g. VCAA Levels 7-8, NSW Stage 4, QCAA]
- Class composition in one line: [e.g. "26 students, mixed ability, four EAL/D at intermediate level, two with reading adjustments, one identified as extension"]
- Lesson length or time budget the resource has to fit into: [e.g. "one 50-minute period, including settle and pack-up"]
- The one thing I want the class to walk away with, plainly stated: [ONE SENTENCE, e.g. "understanding that particles in a gas are the same as particles in a solid, just further apart, not different kinds of particles"]

WHERE THE RESOURCE CAME FROM (this matters for the diagnostic)
- Source: [e.g. "Colleague's shared drive, they teach Year 9 not Year 8", or "US Teachers Pay Teachers pack, 8th grade", or "UK textbook chapter, KS3", or "Facebook teacher group, Queensland state secondary", or "AITSL illustration of practice"]
- What I like about it and want to keep: [ONE OR TWO SENTENCES, e.g. "the sequence from observable behaviour of a gas to the model of particles is cleaner than what I usually build"]
- What I am worried about: [ONE OR TWO SENTENCES, e.g. "the vocabulary is pitched too high for four of my EAL/D kids, and the assessment task at the end assumes a US-style multi-choice test"]

THE RESOURCE (paste it below, verbatim, in a code block or between clear markers)
[PASTE THE FULL RESOURCE. Do NOT summarise it before pasting. If it is a slide deck, paste the text and describe the visuals in square brackets. If it is a worksheet, paste every question. If it is a task brief, paste the full brief and the rubric. If it is longer than about 1500 words, paste the part I will actually use, not the whole document.]

PRODUCE FIVE SECTIONS, IN THIS EXACT ORDER. NO PADDING. NO FLATTERING PRE-AMBLE ("great resource", "strong bones here"). START WITH SECTION 1.

SECTION 1. THE DIAGNOSTIC (what will not survive contact with my class, in quotes)
Walk down the resource. Name the specific lines, questions, tasks, examples, or instructions that will fail with the class I described. For each, do three things on one row:
(a) Quote the line as it stands, in quotation marks, so I can find it. Do not paraphrase.
(b) Name why it will fail for my class in plain English. Options: pitched at the wrong year level (say which year it looks pitched at), assumes a curriculum framing I do not use (say which one), uses vocabulary my EAL/D or reading-adjustment students will not access without support, uses US or UK examples my students will not recognise, uses US spelling or US assessment vocabulary, assumes a lesson structure or resource I do not have, uses a cognitive verb that does not match what I want the class to walk away with, or the task is a comprehension check dressed as analysis.
(c) The specific fix in one sentence. Not "rewrite this". "Replace the third paragraph with an example set in Melbourne so the students recognise the geography before they start reasoning about it."
Aim for the five to eight lines that matter most. Do not list every small change; I will do those in Section 2.

SECTION 2. THE ADAPTED RESOURCE (ready to use, not a draft)
Reproduce the full resource, adapted for my class. Keep the structure the original had unless the diagnostic in Section 1 gave a reason to change it. What you change without asking: US to Australian spelling throughout, US to Australian examples where the example is generic (not where the example is the point, e.g. do not turn the Boston Tea Party into a Sydney one), vocabulary that my EAL/D students will not access, cognitive verbs that do not match my one-sentence takeaway, and any reference to a resource I do not have (US textbook page numbers, UK past-paper questions, apps not available in AU schools). What you leave alone unless I asked: the sequence of the resource, the pedagogical structure, the difficulty of the ideas. Difficulty is not the problem; access to the difficulty is.
If a section of the original resource does not survive Section 1, replace it in-place with the fix, do not delete it silently. If you have to invent content to fill a gap (e.g. an example that fits the AU curriculum where the US example did not), say so at the top of the replacement in one line, so I can sense-check it.

SECTION 3. THE CHANGE LOG (short, in plain English, so I can remember why in three weeks)
Between five and ten bullets, one per meaningful change you made. Format each as: "Changed [WHAT] because [WHY]." e.g. "Changed the opening example from a Chicago apartment block to a Melbourne trainline stop because the original required students to know what a stoop is." Include the changes that are small but load-bearing (vocabulary bridges, sentence-length changes for EAL/D). Do NOT list the trivial spelling changes (color to colour) as separate items. Group them as one line: "Spelling and punctuation to Australian conventions throughout."

SECTION 4. WHERE THE ADAPTATION DID NOT FIX THE ORIGINAL
Name up to three weaknesses the resource had that the adaptation could not fix without rewriting the whole thing. Examples: "The resource treats the cognitive verb as EXPLAIN throughout but ends with a rubric criterion that requires EVALUATE; I have made them consistent by pulling the criterion back to EXPLAIN, but the original assessment intent is now weaker." Or: "The resource is silent on how it wants students to record their thinking; you will need to add a template for that. I have not, because it depends on whether your class works in books, digitally, or on mini whiteboards." Or: "This resource is designed for a 60-minute period. Yours is 50 minutes. I have cut the closing consolidation task, which was the weakest bit. If you have a longer period next week, add it back in."
Be honest. Where the resource was fundamentally not fit for purpose, say so. "I have made this usable for a mid-band Year 8 class, but the original was actually designed for the top band of Year 9. If your class is genuinely mid Year 8, you will need to slow down through the middle two activities."

SECTION 5. THE ONE ADAPTATION PATTERN TO REUSE
Name the ONE adaptation move you had to make most in this resource. e.g. "Every US worksheet I adapt for an AU class needs the same move on assessment: strip the multi-choice framing and replace it with a short-response question aligned to the ACARA cognitive verb. If you use resources from this source often, build a saved prompt that does that as a first pass, so we are not doing it item by item every time." One paragraph, so I can turn this into a habit rather than a per-resource fix.

RULES
- Australian English throughout. Year 8, not 8th grade. Term 3, not Q3. Australian spelling and Australian assessment vocabulary (SAC, CAT, assessment task, common assessment, not "unit test" as the default).
- No em-dashes and no en-dashes anywhere. Commas and full stops only.
- Do not invent content that changes the argument of the source. If the original resource takes a position, keep it. If you strengthen or soften it, say so in Section 3.
- Do not add references, citations, or sources you cannot verify. If a US resource cites a US study, keep the citation as written; do not swap it for an AU study you have not confirmed exists.
- Do not use the words "leverage", "unpack", "deep dive", "robust", "scaffold their thinking", or the phrase "meet students where they are".
- Do not finish with "let me know if you want me to adapt more". I will ask if I want that.

What it does well

Forces the model into a two-pass structure that is closer to how experienced teachers actually adapt resources than a "make this Australian" one-shot: a diagnostic with quoted lines first, then a full rebuild, then a change log. Section 1 is the block that pays for the whole prompt, because the quoted-line requirement stops the model doing the thing it defaults to (generic "I have adjusted this for an Australian audience") and forces it to point at the actual sentences it changed. Section 4 is quietly the second highest-value block: it is the honest audit of where the adaptation carried the resource over the line and where the resource itself was the problem. Most teachers using AI to adapt resources never see that section because they never ask for it, and they blame themselves the following Tuesday when the resource still lands flat. The Section 5 pattern move is what turns one adaptation into a workflow you reuse for the rest of the term.

Where it falls over

The model will sometimes silently "improve" the pedagogy of the original resource in Section 2 without flagging it in Section 3. If Section 3 lists five changes and the adapted version has clearly restructured a lesson activity, ask the model to add the restructure to the change log and defend it. Second failure: for genuinely bad source resources, the diagnostic in Section 1 can turn into ten lines of "this is at the wrong year level" and the adapted version in Section 2 becomes a rewrite in all but name. When that happens, believe it, and next time do not adapt that source; build fresh. Third failure: the model cannot know your class the way you do. If the original resource assumes a lesson-hooked routine your class does not have (e.g. a formal turn-and-talk protocol you have not established this year), the adaptation will keep the routine and you will notice when you read it. Delete it and replace with the routine your class actually uses. And the prompt cannot judge whether the resource was worth adapting in the first place. If the source was already thin, a well-adapted thin resource is still thin. Sense-check the resource itself before you paste it in.

Try it like this

For a US 8th-grade science worksheet on the particle model that a colleague forwarded: paste the whole worksheet and set the year level to Year 8. Section 1 will surface the American units (Fahrenheit, cups), the American examples ("your grandmother's apple pie"), and the multi-choice terminal question that assumes a bubble sheet. Section 2 will give you a version with celsius, an example from a Melbourne morning frost, and a short-response terminal question aligned to the ACARA verb. Section 5 tells you which of those changes you will make on every US worksheet, so the next one takes five minutes instead of twenty.

For a colleague's Year 9 lesson plan on persuasive writing that you want to run with Year 8: paste the whole plan and set the year level down one. Section 1 will name the cognitive-verb mismatch (Year 9 asks students to EVALUATE the argument; Year 8 ACARA v9.0 asks them to EXPLAIN it). Section 2 will pull the level back cleanly. Section 4 will name whether the assessment task at the end of the lesson is still fit for Year 8, or whether it needs a separate rebuild. Cheaper than starting from scratch and honest about where the down-scaling costs something.

For a UK KS3 humanities reading pack you found on a shared drive: paste the pack and set the state context (VCAA, NSW, QCAA). Section 1 will flag the KS3 assessment vocabulary that will not survive in an AU classroom (e.g. "levels" instead of "achievement standards", specific to English exam boards). Section 2 will re-frame it around AU curriculum descriptors without softening the historical content. This is the adaptation move worth learning because KS3 humanities resources are richer than most of what is on the Australian shared drives, and the effort of adapting is small once you have a repeatable pattern.

For a Facebook teacher-group resource where you can see the QLD teacher who wrote it clearly knows their stuff but the class comp is different from yours: paste the resource and put the composition difference explicitly into the context ("original was written for a top-band Year 10 English class, mine is mid-band with four EAL/D"). Section 4 will name whether the adaptation held the intellectual demand of the original or whether you have quietly softened it. If you have, own that; if the model has, ask it to defend the softening.

If you only have ten minutes today from the couch, paste the resource and ask for Sections 1 and 5 only. The diagnostic and the reusable pattern. Section 2 you can produce in a second pass tomorrow when you have twenty minutes at the kitchen table and a proper cup of coffee.

The resource you adapt with intent is the resource you own by Term 3 week 2. The one you paste in unchanged is the one the class will politely refuse to engage with, and you will blame yourself for a fortnight before working out it was never yours to begin with.