1.1 What Gemini is

Gemini is Google’s AI assistant. You type a question or instruction in ordinary language, and it writes back — lesson plans, explanations, question sets, letters, translations, summaries. It is free with any Gmail account.

Think of it as a colleague who has read enormously, never gets tired, works at 11 pm, and will rewrite something twelve times without complaining — but who has never met your students and does not know your school. Your job is to tell it what it needs to know.

1.2 What you need before you start

• A smartphone or computer
• Internet connection
• A Google (Gmail) account
• Age 13 or above to use a personal Google account with Gemini

1.3 Step A — Create a Google account (skip if you already have Gmail)

1. Open your browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and go to accounts.google.com
2. Click Create account
3. Choose For my personal use
4. Type your first name and last name → Next
5. Enter your date of birth and gender → Next
6. Choose a Gmail address. Use a professional one, e.g. sitaram.sharma.maths@gmail.com — not a nickname. You will share this with colleagues and possibly parents → Next
7. Create a strong password (8+ characters, mix of letters, numbers and a symbol). Write it somewhere safe that is not your phone’s notes app → Next
8. Add your mobile number (choose Nepal +977) for recovery and verification. Enter the code sent by SMS
9. Review and click I agree

1.4 Step B — Log in to Gemini on a computer

1. Open your browser and go to gemini.google.com
2. Click Sign in at the top right
3. Type your Gmail address → Next
4. Type your password → Next
5. If you have two-step verification on, approve the prompt on your phone or enter the 6-digit code
6. Read the welcome screen and click I agree / Get started
7. You are in. You will see a text box at the bottom saying something like “Ask Gemini”

1.5 Step C — Use Gemini on your phone

Android: Open Play Store → search Gemini → Install → open → sign in with the same Gmail.

iPhone: Open App Store → search Gemini → Get → open → sign in.

Any phone, no installation: open your browser and go to gemini.google.com, sign in, then use your browser menu → Add to Home screen. It will behave almost like an app.

1.6 A quick tour of the screen

1.7 Your first three minutes

Type these three prompts, one after another, just to feel how it works:

1. Explain the difference between area and perimeter to a Class 5 student in Nepal, using an example from a Kathmandu house.
2. Now make it simpler and shorter.
3. Now give me 5 practice questions on it with an answer key.

Notice what happened: you did not start again. You refined. That is the single most important habit in this handbook.

1.8 Common login problems

2.1 The whole idea in one comparison

A weak prompt:

Give me a maths lesson plan.

What you get back: a generic, American-flavoured, gradeless plan you cannot use.

A strong prompt:

You are an experienced Grade 5 mathematics teacher in a Nepali community school. Write a 45-minute lesson plan on adding unlike fractions for my class of 38 students at Shree Sewa Sadan School, Kathmandu, following the CDC curriculum. I have only a whiteboard and chalk. Give it as a table with time, teacher activity and student activity.

What you get back: something you can teach tomorrow.

The difference is not intelligence. It is instruction. The AI is not reading your mind — it is reading your words.

2.2 The five-part formula: R-O-C-C-O

Every good prompt answers five questions. You do not need all five every time, but the more you give, the better the output.

2.3 A complete sample prompt

Situation: You teach Class 5 Mathematics at Shree Sewa Sadan School, Kathmandu. You are starting Unit 12 — Fraction and Decimal — from the CDC curriculum. Copy this whole thing into Gemini.

Send it. Then improve it with follow-ups such as:

• Make the group activity 5 minutes shorter and add a game element.
• Rewrite the board work so it fits on one whiteboard.
• Add 5 word problems set in a Kathmandu context — tempo fare, momo shop, Dashain shopping.

2.4 The blank template — fill this in for any subject

2.5 The second prompt matters more than the first

Most teachers send one prompt, get an average answer, and conclude AI is not useful. The good output almost always comes from prompt three or four. Useful follow-ups to keep on hand:

• Make it simpler — my students' English is weak.
• Make it harder — this is too easy for my top group.
• Shorten this to fit in 30 minutes.
• Rewrite this for a class of 45 with no printing.
• Give me the Nepali translation of the student-facing parts.
• Now turn this into 10 multiple-choice questions with an answer key.
• What is wrong with this lesson plan? Criticise it as a strict school inspector would, then fix it.
• Give me two more versions of question 4 at the same difficulty.

2.6 Ten upgrades: before and after

3.1 What a Gem is

Every time you open a normal Gemini chat, you are meeting a stranger. You have to explain again: your class, your school, your curriculum, your students’ level, the format you want. That is 200 words of typing before you get to the actual request.

A Gem is a saved version of Gemini that already knows all of that.

You build it once — you write down who you are, what you teach, and how you want things done — and save it with a name. From then on you just open it and say “Lesson plan for Unit 12, 45 minutes” and it produces exactly what you need, in your format, for your class.

The difference between using Gemini and using a Gem is the difference between a new substitute teacher every day and a trained assistant who has worked with you for a year.

Gems are free on every Gemini plan.

3.2 How to create a Gem — step by step

1. Go to gemini.google.com and sign in
2. In the left sidebar, click Explore Gems (on some versions it is called Gem manager)
3. Click + New Gem
4. In the Name box, type a clear name
5. In the Instructions box, write out everything the Gem should always know and always do (see 3.3 and 3.4 — this is the important part)
6. Optional but powerful: under Knowledge, click Add files and upload reference documents — your curriculum PDF, the textbook chapter, last year’s question paper, your school’s assessment format. Up to 10 files
7. On the right side, type a test prompt to preview how the Gem responds
8. Click Save. Previewing does not save it — teachers lose their work here constantly
9. Your Gem now appears in the left sidebar. Click it any time to start a chat with it

3.3 The three parts of a Gem

3.4 A complete sample Gem

For the same teacher as before: Class 5 Mathematics, Shree Sewa Sadan School, Kathmandu.

Name

Description

Instructions

Copy the whole block below into the Instructions box. Change the school name, class size and details to match your own reality.

What to upload under Knowledge

• The CDC Grade 5 Mathematics curriculum PDF
• Photographs or a PDF of the textbook units you are currently teaching
• Your school’s exam format and specification grid
• Last year’s terminal question paper
• Your annual teaching calendar

Once these are attached, you can ask: “Following our school’s exam format in the file, make a 50-mark first-terminal question paper covering Units 1 to 8.”

3.5 Using your Gem day to day

Once the Gem is built, your prompts become very short:

• Lesson plan, Unit 8 Area, 45 minutes.
• Quiz on unlike fractions.
• PPT outline for Unit 1 Geometry, angles with protractor.
• Remedial for the 10 weak students on multiplication tables, 15 minutes.
• Parent note about the maths test on Friday.
• Worksheet, Unitary Method, three difficulty levels.

That is the payoff. Ten seconds of typing instead of five minutes.

3.6 Testing and improving a Gem

A Gem is never right the first time. Test it with six prompts:

1. A simple request — does it follow the basic format?
2. A complex, multi-part request — does it hold together?
3. A vague request — does it ask the clarifying question you told it to ask?
4. A request outside its subject — does it stay in its lane?
5. A request that breaks one of your rules — does it hold the rule?
6. The same request twice — is the quality consistent?

Wherever the output misses, go back into Instructions, add one specific sentence fixing that gap, and Save. Three rounds of this and your Gem will be genuinely good.

3.7 Five more Gems worth building

(This is the tool you may know as NotebookLM. Google renamed it to Gemini Notebook in July 2026. It is the same product — your old notebooks and links still work.)

4.1 What makes it different — and this is the whole point

Normal Gemini answers from everything it has ever read. That is powerful, but it means it can invent things or drift away from your curriculum.

Gemini Notebook answers only from the documents you give it.

You upload your textbook chapter, your curriculum, your notes. Then everything it produces — every answer, every quiz question, every summary — comes from those documents only, with a clickable citation pointing back to the exact line it came from.

For a teacher this is the difference between “an AI wrote something about fractions” and “an AI made study material from my chapter, following my curriculum, and I can check every sentence against the source.”

4.2 Opening Gemini Notebook

You do not need a separate account. Your Gmail is enough.

1. Go to notebook.google.com (the older address, notebooklm.google, also still works)
2. Click Sign in and use the same Google account you use for Gemini
3. Accept the terms
4. You will see your notebook dashboard, empty at first
5. On mobile, the same address works in a browser; there is also a Notebook section inside the Gemini app

4.3 Creating your first notebook

1. Click + Create new (or New notebook)
2. It immediately asks you to add a source — the notebook cannot do anything without material
3. Add your first source (see 4.4)
4. Give the notebook a clear name by clicking the title at the top — for example “Class 5 Maths — Unit 12 Fractions”
5. Add more sources. Four to eight good sources is the sweet spot for a chapter

4.4 What you can add as a source

Free plan limits: up to 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook, and each source can be up to 500,000 words or 200 MB.

What a teacher should actually put in

For a chapter notebook: - Photos or PDF of the textbook chapter - The relevant section of the CDC curriculum - Your own lesson notes - A good YouTube explanation of the topic - Two or three past question papers on that unit

For an exam preparation notebook: - The full unit textbook pages - Past papers from the last three years - The specification grid / marking scheme - Your class notes

For a professional development notebook: - Training handouts - The UNESCO or Ministry documents you are working through - Recordings of the sessions you attended

4.5 Talking to your sources

The chat box is in the middle of the screen. Everything you ask is answered from your sources only.

Try:

• Summarise this chapter in 10 points a Class 5 student would understand.
• List every formula in these sources.
• Which topics appear most often in the past papers I uploaded?
• What prior knowledge do students need before this chapter?
• Find three real-life examples in these sources I can use in class.
• Compare how the textbook and the curriculum document describe this learning outcome.

Each answer carries small numbered citations. Click one and it jumps to the exact sentence in the exact source. This is the feature that makes the tool trustworthy — use it.

4.6 The Studio panel — turning sources into materials

The Studio panel is on the right side of the screen. Each button turns your sources into a different kind of teaching material, in one click. All of them accept custom instructions, and giving custom instructions makes them dramatically better than the default.

Audio Overview

What it is: Two AI voices discuss your material like a radio programme or podcast. Available in around 80 languages, including Nepali.

Best for: Students who learn better by listening. Revision on the way to school. Students with reading difficulties. Your own preparation while doing housework.

Steps: Studio panel → Audio Overview → click Customise → type your instruction → Generate. It takes a few minutes. When ready, play it or click the three dots → Download to get an audio file you can send on WhatsApp.

Custom instruction to use: > The audience is Grade 5 students in Nepal aged 10. Use very simple English and short sentences. Explain fractions using examples from a Nepali household — dividing roti, sharing chiya, splitting money. Keep it under 8 minutes. End with three questions for the listener to answer.

Video Overview

What it is: A narrated video summary with visuals generated from your sources. There is a standard version and shorter formats.

Best for: A 5-minute chapter introduction. Sharing in a class WhatsApp group. Flipped classroom — students watch at home, you use class time for practice.

Steps: Studio → Video Overview → Customise → describe the audience and focus → Generate → download and share.

Custom instruction to use: > Create a 5-minute video introduction to this chapter for Grade 5 students in Nepal. Focus only on the concept of unlike fractions and why we need a common denominator. Use simple visuals and simple English. Do not cover the exercises.

Slide Deck

What it is: A complete presentation built from your sources, which you can export to PowerPoint or PDF. Slide decks are editable by prompt — you can tell it to change slides after generating.

Best for: Any topic you would otherwise spend an evening making slides for.

Steps: Studio → Slide Deck → Customise → specify the number of slides, the audience and the style → Generate → review → export to PowerPoint or PDF.

Custom instruction to use: > Make a 10-slide deck for teaching Grade 5 students in Nepal. One idea per slide. Maximum 5 bullet points per slide and maximum 10 words per bullet. Include one worked example slide and one practice slide with 3 questions. Use a clean, high-contrast design that is readable from the back of a classroom.

Quiz

What it is: Auto-generated quiz questions drawn strictly from your sources, with answers.

Best for: Unit tests, class quizzes, revision, homework.

Steps: Studio → Quiz → Customise → set the number, type and difficulty → Generate. You can then take the quiz on screen or copy the questions out.

Custom instruction to use: > Generate 20 questions from these sources for Grade 5 students. Structure in three tiers: questions 1–8 test recall of facts and definitions, questions 9–15 test understanding, questions 16–20 test application to real situations. Give the correct answer and a one-sentence explanation for each, citing which source it came from. Use simple English.

Flashcards

What it is: Two-sided cards — term on one side, meaning on the other — generated from your material.

Best for: Vocabulary, formulas, definitions, dates, scientific terms. Excellent for exam revision.

Steps: Studio → Flashcards → Customise → Generate. Flip through them on screen; students can too, if you share the notebook.

Custom instruction to use: > Create 30 flashcards covering every key term and formula in these sources. Front: the term in English. Back: a one-sentence explanation in simple English, the Nepali term in Roman letters, and one example. Order them from easiest to hardest.

Infographic

What it is: A single visual poster summarising your material — diagrams, icons, structured layout.

Best for: Classroom wall charts. A one-page revision sheet. Something to send to a parents’ group.

Steps: Studio → Infographic → Customise → describe what it should show → Generate → download the image and print or display it.

Custom instruction to use: > Create a classroom wall chart for Grade 5 students showing the steps for adding unlike fractions. Use exactly 4 numbered steps with a small worked example under each. Large, clear text readable from three metres away. Minimal decoration.

Mind Map

What it is: An expandable branching diagram of how the ideas in your sources connect.

Best for: Showing students the shape of a chapter before you teach it. Your own planning. Revision structure.

Steps: Studio → Mind Map → Generate. Click any node to expand it. Click a node and you can ask a question about just that branch. Download as an image.

Use it like this: Display the mind map at the start of a unit and again at the end. Students see how far they have travelled.

Reports

What it is: Longer written documents. Under Reports you will find formats such as Study Guide, Briefing Document, FAQ, Timeline, and a custom report where you describe what you want.

Best for: Study guides for students. Briefing notes for your head teacher. FAQ sheets for parents. Timelines for history and social studies.

Steps: Studio → Reports → choose a format or write a custom instruction → Generate → copy out or export.

Custom instruction to use: > Write a 3-page revision study guide on this chapter for Grade 5 students in Nepal. Sections: key terms with meanings, formulas, three worked examples, common mistakes, and 10 self-test questions with answers at the end. Simple English, short paragraphs.

Data Table

What it is: Turns scattered information across your sources into a structured comparison table you can export to Google Sheets.

Best for: Comparing things — planets, states of matter, the reigns of kings, question paper patterns across years, plant and animal cells.

Steps: Studio → Data Table → describe the columns you want → Generate → export to Sheets.

Custom instruction to use: > Make a comparison table from the past papers I uploaded. Columns: Unit | Number of questions in 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Total marks | Question types used. Sort by total marks, highest first.

4.7 Sharing a notebook with students or colleagues

Click Share at the top right. You can copy a link and send it in your class WhatsApp group. Anyone with the link can read the sources and use the outputs.

4.8 A realistic teacher workflow

Here is what a full chapter looks like in about 40 minutes of work:

1. Photograph the textbook chapter with your phone → upload to a new notebook
2. Add the CDC curriculum extract and two past papers
3. Generate a Study Guide → this becomes your handout
4. Generate a Quiz, 20 questions, three tiers → this becomes your unit test
5. Generate Flashcards → share the link in the class group for revision
6. Generate an Audio Overview in Nepali → send to the group for students who read poorly
7. Generate a Slide Deck → export to PowerPoint for the days you have a projector
8. Generate a Mind Map → draw a simplified version on the board on day one
9. Check everything against the textbook before it reaches a student

That is nine teaching resources from one chapter, in one sitting.

5.1 What Claude is, and what it is especially good at

Claude is an AI assistant made by a company called Anthropic. It does many of the same things Gemini does, but teachers usually find it stronger in four specific areas:

1. Long, properly formatted documents. Claude holds structure well across many pages. Question papers with a specification grid, unit plans, school reports, curriculum maps, policy documents — these come out organised rather than rambling.

2. Actual files you can download. Claude can produce a finished PDF, Word document, PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet and give you a download link. Not text you have to reformat — a real file.

3. Interactive classroom tools and simulations. Claude can write small working programs that run in your browser. This is the feature teachers find most surprising: a 3D model of the solar system students can rotate, a virtual protractor, a fraction wall they can drag, a circuit builder, a simulation of the water cycle. These are called Artifacts, they appear beside your chat, and you can share them by link.

4. Careful, honest reasoning. Claude is comparatively willing to say “this part is uncertain” or “check this” rather than producing confident nonsense. For a teacher, that matters.

5.2 Creating your Claude account

1. Go to claude.ai
2. Click Sign up
3. Choose Continue with Google and select your Gmail — this is the fastest route — or enter an email address and receive a login code
4. Verify your email if asked
5. Enter your name and accept the terms
6. You are in. The chat box is in the centre of the screen

The free plan is enough for everything in this handbook. You have a limited number of messages in each period; if you run out, wait a few hours or switch to Gemini in the meantime.

5.3 The screen

5.4 Projects — the Claude version of a Gem

A Project is a workspace that remembers your context. It has two parts:

• Custom instructions — a permanent briefing that applies to every chat inside the project
• Project knowledge — files you upload once that Claude can consult in every chat

Free accounts can create up to five projects. Use them for the five things you do most.

How to create one

1. In the left sidebar, click Projects
2. Click + New Project at the top right
3. Give it a name and a short description
4. Open the project and find the Instructions field — write your permanent briefing there
5. Upload your reference files into Project knowledge
6. Start a new chat from inside the project. Every chat there now inherits your instructions and files

A sample project for our Class 5 maths teacher

Name: Class 5 Maths — Shree Sewa Sadan

Description: Teaching materials, question papers and classroom tools for Grade 5 mathematics, CDC Nepal curriculum.

Instructions:

Project knowledge to upload: the CDC curriculum PDF, textbook chapters, your school’s exam format, past question papers, your annual calendar.

5.5 Claude for real documents

These prompts produce files you can download and use immediately.

A formatted question paper as a Word document: > Using the exam format in my project knowledge, create a 50-mark First Terminal Examination question paper for Class 5 Mathematics covering Units 1 to 8. Include a specification grid showing marks by unit and by objective (knowledge, understanding, application, higher ability). Then create a separate marking scheme with step marks. Give me both as downloadable Word documents.

A polished report as a PDF: > Create a 4-page PDF report titled "Class 5 Mathematics — First Terminal Analysis" with these sections: overview, performance by unit, common errors observed, three intervention strategies, and a plan for the next term. Use the data I paste below. Make it look professional enough to hand to my head teacher — proper headings, a table, and a chart. Do not include any student names.

A presentation: > Create a 12-slide PowerPoint on the Unitary Method for Grade 5 students in Nepal. One idea per slide, maximum 10 words per bullet, one worked example slide, one practice slide, and speaker notes telling me what to say on each slide. Make the design clean and readable from the back of a classroom.

A spreadsheet: > Create an Excel marks register for 38 students with columns for roll number, name, four unit tests, terminal exam, total, percentage, grade and remarks. Add formulas that calculate the total, percentage and letter grade automatically, and a summary sheet showing class average and the distribution of grades.

5.6 Claude for interactive classroom tools and 3D simulations

This is worth trying even if you never use anything else in Part 5. Ask, wait a minute, and a working tool appears beside your chat which you can display on a screen or share by link.

Prompts to try:

Build an interactive fraction wall for Grade 5 students. Students should be able to click bars representing halves, thirds, quarters, sixths and eighths and see them compared visually, with a section showing how to find a common denominator between any two they select. Simple, colourful, works on a phone.

Build an interactive 3D solar system for Grade 6 science students in Nepal. Planets orbit at correct relative speeds, students can rotate the view and click any planet to see its name, distance from the sun in kilometres, and one interesting fact in simple English.

Build a virtual protractor tool. Students drag two rays to form an angle and the tool shows the measurement in degrees and names the angle type — acute, right, obtuse, straight, reflex. Include a practice mode that shows a random angle and asks the student to estimate it.

Build an interactive water cycle simulation for Grade 5. Clicking each stage — evaporation, condensation, precipitation, collection — animates it and shows a one-sentence explanation in simple English with the Nepali term.

Build a place value board for Grade 4 and 5. Students click to add or remove counters in the ones, tens, hundreds and thousands columns, and the number updates in figures and in words.

Build a class quiz game with 15 multiple-choice questions on the perimeter and area of rectangles for Grade 5. Show a score, give encouraging feedback after each answer, and show a summary of mistakes at the end.

Once it appears, refine it: Make the text larger. Add sound. Add a Nepali language toggle. Make it work well on a small phone screen.

Then click Share at the top of the artifact and send the link to your class group.

5.7 Which tool for which job

Change the subject, class and topic. Everything else can stay.

A. Planning

1. You are an experienced [subject] teacher in Nepal. Write a 45-minute lesson plan on [topic] for Grade [X] in a community school with [N] students. Whiteboard only, no printing. Give it as a table with Time, Teacher activity, Student activity and Purpose. Include three measurable objectives and a 5-minute formative check.

2. Create a 4-week unit plan for [unit] in Grade [X] [subject], CDC Nepal curriculum. For each week give the topics, learning outcomes, activities, materials and assessment. Show it as a table.

3. I have 6 periods to finish [unit] before the terminal exam and I am behind schedule. Suggest what to prioritise, what to compress and what to set as guided self-study, and give me a period-by-period plan.

4. Suggest 10 low-cost, no-printing classroom activities for teaching [topic] to Grade [X] in Nepal. Each under 10 minutes, using only materials found in a Nepali home or classroom.

5. Design a 3-day project-based learning activity on [topic] for Grade [X] that connects to students' daily life in Kathmandu. Include the driving question, daily tasks, materials, group roles and an assessment rubric.

B. Making materials

6. Explain [concept] to a Grade [X] student in Nepal in three different ways: a simple definition, a real-life analogy from Nepali daily life, and a short story. Simple English, under 200 words each.

7. Create a worksheet on [topic] for Grade [X]. Title, name and date line, clear instructions, 15 questions arranged from easy to hard in three labelled levels, and a separate answer key with working shown.

8. Write 10 word problems on [topic] for Grade [X] set in a Nepali context — rupees, bus and tempo fares, local shops, Dashain and Tihar shopping, farming, monsoon. Include a full answer key with steps.

9. Make a slide-by-slide outline for a 10-slide presentation on [topic] for Grade [X]. For each slide: title, maximum 5 bullets of 10 words, one suggested visual, and a 2-sentence speaker note.

10. Take the text below and rewrite it at the reading level of a Grade [X] Nepali student learning in English. Keep all the key information. Then list the 10 difficult words with simple meanings and Nepali equivalents in Roman letters.

11. Create a one-page classroom wall chart on [topic] for Grade [X]. Give me the exact text and layout, with large headings, a maximum of 4 steps, and one worked example. It must be readable from three metres away.

C. Assessment

12. Create a 25-mark unit test on [unit] for Grade [X]. Include a specification grid showing marks by objective — knowledge, understanding, application, higher ability. Add a marking scheme with step marks.

13. Make 20 multiple-choice questions on [topic] for Grade [X]. Four options each. Make the wrong options realistic student errors. Give the answer key and explain in one line why each wrong option is tempting.

14. Create an assessment rubric for [task — a project / presentation / essay / practical] for Grade [X]. Four criteria, four performance levels each, with descriptors written in language a student can understand.

15. My students made these errors in the last test: [list the errors]. Identify the underlying misconception behind each, and give me a 20-minute reteaching plan that addresses the root cause rather than the symptom.

16. Write 15 open-ended questions on [topic] that require students to explain their thinking rather than recall a fact. Arrange them from simple to challenging, with model answers.

17. Design a 10-minute oral assessment for [topic] in Grade [X] — 8 questions I can ask individual students at my desk, with a simple 3-point scoring guide for each.

D. Differentiation and support

18. I have 10 students in Grade [X] who are two years behind in [subject], specifically weak in [skill]. Design a 15-minute daily intervention for two weeks that builds the prerequisite skill using concrete materials first, then pictures, then abstract numbers.

19. Give me three extension tasks on [topic] for fast finishers in Grade [X] that go deeper into the same concept rather than moving ahead to the next chapter.

20. I have a student who understands the concepts but cannot read the English questions. Suggest five practical classroom strategies I can use immediately without extra resources.

21. Rewrite this lesson plan so it works for a class of 55 students in a single room with no group-work space.

22. Suggest five ways to include a student with [a described learning difficulty] in a Grade [X] [subject] lesson on [topic], using no special equipment.

E. Communication and administration

23. Write a message of under 120 words to parents about [the topic — an upcoming test / a school programme / homework expectations]. Respectful, simple English. Then give the same message in Nepali.

24. Write 20 report card comments for Grade [X] [subject] — five each for excellent, good, satisfactory and needs-improvement students. Specific, encouraging, mentioning a next step. No student names.

25. Draft a one-page proposal to my head teacher requesting [what you want]. Include the rationale, the benefit to students, the cost, and how I will measure whether it worked.

26. Write a 3-minute speech for a school programme on [theme], suitable for an audience of students, parents and local guests in Nepal.

27. Turn my rough notes below into a clear, professional minutes-of-meeting document with decisions, action points and responsibilities.

F. Your own growth

28. Review the lesson plan below and criticise it as a strict school inspector would. Then give me a revised version fixing every weakness you identified.

29. Explain [teaching method or concept — formative assessment / scaffolding / Bloom's taxonomy / differentiated instruction] in simple terms, then show me exactly what it would look like in a Grade [X] [subject] class in Nepal, with three concrete examples.

30. I want to improve at [teaching skill]. Give me a 30-day plan with one specific practice each day that takes under 15 minutes, and a way to tell whether I am improving.

Getting better output

1. Be specific about the class and the country. “Grade 5 in Nepal” produces very different material from “Grade 5”. Without it you will get American examples with dollars and baseball.

2. Always state the format you want. Table, bullet points, three sections, 200 words, with an answer key. If you do not say, you get paragraphs.

3. Give it an example of what good looks like. Paste one of your own past question papers and say “match this format exactly.” This is the single most effective trick in the handbook.

4. Iterate, do not restart. Say “shorter”, “simpler”, “add Nepali examples”, “make question 4 harder”. Each round improves it.

5. Ask it to criticise itself. What are the three weakest parts of this lesson plan? Now fix them. Free quality control.

6. Ask for more than you need and cut. Ask for 20 questions, keep the best 10. Selecting is faster than generating.

7. Give it your constraints honestly. No projector, no printer, 55 students, 30 minutes. Real constraints produce usable output; pretending you have a smart classroom produces a fantasy lesson.

Working faster

8. Photograph the textbook page and upload it instead of typing the content. All three tools read photographs of text.

9. Use voice input when typing is slow. The microphone handles Nepali-accented English well.

10. Build the Gem or Project once. Ten minutes spent on instructions saves you an hour every week for the rest of the year.

11. Save your good prompts. Keep a note on your phone called “My prompts”. When something works, paste it there. Within a month you will have a personal library.

12. Work in one thread per topic. Continuing an existing chat means it remembers the context. Starting fresh means explaining everything again.

13. Batch your work. Do a whole unit in one sitting — plan, worksheet, quiz, slides, parent note — rather than opening the tool five separate times.

Using it well in the classroom

14. Never take the first draft to class. Read it as a teacher, not as a user. Change what does not fit your students.

15. Check every calculation yourself. AI makes arithmetic errors, and a wrong answer key in front of 38 students is worse than no answer key.

16. Check the Nepali context. It may write “cents”, “high school”, “principal’s office”, “fall semester”. Fix these before students see them.

17. Keep your voice. Do not send a parent a letter that sounds like nobody you know. Rewrite it so it sounds like you.

18. Show your students the process, not just the product. When you use AI openly and check it in front of them, you are teaching the most important AI skill there is — verification.

19. Share what works with your colleagues. A prompt that saves you an hour saves your whole department an hour. Put it in the staff group.

20. Do not let the tool set the pace. AI can generate a term’s worth of material in an afternoon. Your students still learn at the speed of children.

This section matters more than any other. A teacher who uses AI carelessly can do real harm — to a child’s privacy, to their own professional standing, and to their students’ trust.

8.1 The red lines — never do these

8.2 The principles

Verification is your professional duty. AI produces text that sounds authoritative whether or not it is true. It will invent a statistic, misstate a date, get a Nepali fact wrong, or make an arithmetic slip — in fluent, confident language. You are the last check before it reaches a child. Verify every number, every date, every claim about Nepal, and every answer key.

You remain the teacher. The relationship between you and your students is the thing that makes education work. AI can prepare your materials. It cannot notice that a child came to school without eating, or that the quiet student at the back has stopped raising her hand. Save the time AI gives you and spend it on the things only you can do.

Be transparent. Tell your colleagues and your school when material is AI-assisted. There is nothing shameful in it — it is a tool, like a textbook or a calculator. But hiding it invites suspicion, and honesty now protects you later. If your school does not yet have an AI policy, offer to help write one.

Watch for bias. AI is trained mostly on English-language material from wealthy countries. It will quietly default to male scientists, urban settings, nuclear families, and Western festivals. It may under-represent girls, rural children, children with disabilities, and Nepal’s many communities. Read your material asking: who appears in this, and who is missing? Then fix it.

Protect fairness and access. Not every student has a smartphone or data. If AI-generated resources become necessary to pass your class, you have widened the gap between your richest and poorest students. Everything you make with AI must remain available to a child with nothing but a notebook.

Respect copyright. Uploading a textbook chapter into a private notebook to prepare your own lessons is ordinary teaching practice. Generating a full reproduction of a copyrighted book and distributing it is not. Do not publish AI-generated material that closely copies someone else’s work, and cite sources when you use them.

Think about the environment and the cost. These tools use real resources. Generate what you need; do not generate a hundred versions for entertainment.

8.3 What to teach your students

Your students will use AI whether or not you approve. What they learn about it depends largely on you.

• Be honest about it. Tell them you use it, tell them what for, and tell them what you check.
• Teach verification as the core skill. Give the class an AI answer that contains a deliberate error and ask them to find it. Do this repeatedly. It is the most valuable AI lesson you can teach.
• Draw the honesty line clearly. Using AI to understand something is learning. Submitting AI work as your own is cheating. Say it plainly and put it in writing.
• Teach them their own privacy. They should never type their name, address, school, phone number, photographs or family details into any AI tool.
• Remind them of the age rules. Personal Google and Claude accounts require a minimum age. Younger children should use these tools only with a teacher or parent operating the account.
• Protect the struggle. Learning happens in the difficult part. If AI does the difficult part, no learning happened. Tell students this in those words.

8.4 A simple classroom AI charter

Write these five lines on a chart and put them on your classroom wall.

Do one thing a day. By next week you will have a working system.

The one-page summary

Prepared as a follow-up resource for the AI in Education teacher training workshop, Kathmandu, August 2026. Tools and interfaces change frequently — if a button is not where this handbook says it is, look nearby; the feature is almost certainly still there under a slightly different name.