Integrating artificial intelligence in literacy lessons for elementary classrooms: a co-design approach

University–school partnership (elementary literacy innovation)

Cyprus / Greek-language elementary context (author affiliations)

Researchers facilitating co-design workshops; teachers as co-designers

• In-school (K–12)

Co-design cycles followed by classroom pilot of AI-integrated literacy lessons

Multi-phase project (co-design with teachers; pilot in four classrooms)

25 teachers in focus groups; 62 students in pilot survey

AI tools supporting literacy (including generative AI / NLP tools such as ChatGPT-class applications per paper framing)

• Pilot scale is modest (four classrooms)
• Generalization requires replication across grades and subjects
• GenAI policies and tool versions evolve quickly relative to publication
• Teacher workload for co-design must be sustainably scheduled

Elementary (primary) students in literacy courses

Increasing informal exposure to generative AI; varied guided school use

Not emphasized; focus on literacy learning with AI supports

• Co-develop age-appropriate AI-integrated literacy lessons aligned to national curriculum
• Evaluate co-design as a method for teacher empowerment and collaborative resource creation
• Assess student perceptions of enjoyment, engagement, and conceptual depth in AI-supported literacy work

• Strengthen AI literacy alongside mother-tongue reading and writing goals
• Generate adaptable materials for diverse elementary classrooms

• Not a large-scale randomized efficacy trial across schools
• Not a standardized literacy achievement test battery as sole outcome
• Not vendor-neutral evaluation of a single commercial product exclusively

Generative and NLP-based AI tools integrated into literacy tasks (per study framing)

• Co-creator
• Tutor

Greek language literacy instruction

• Students interact with AI-supported activities for text sense-making, interest, and multimedia creation where applicable
• Teachers orchestrate tasks, prompts, and ethical boundaries co-designed with researchers

• Academic integrity and appropriate use policies for generative AI in writing tasks
• Age-appropriate content filtering and teacher oversight of model outputs
• Data minimization for any student-generated text or images sent to cloud tools
• Critical examination of hallucinations, authorship, and bias in literacy examples

• Establish co-design workshops with 25 in-service teachers and researchers
• Iterate lesson plans aligned to national elementary standards and literacy goals
• Pilot materials in four classrooms and administer student perception survey (n=62)
• Analyze teacher focus-group themes (ownership, collaboration, enthusiasm) alongside student ratings

• Teachers retain curricular authority; AI assists with explanations, feedback, or generative scaffolds as designed
• Students learn to evaluate AI-supported suggestions within literacy disciplinary norms

• Co-design ensures local feasibility and teacher buy-in before pilot
• Activities target text comprehension and motivation in mother-tongue instruction

• Integrating fast-moving AI responsibly into national curriculum structures
• Teacher concerns about proper school use and role shifts in AI-rich classrooms
• Need for continued PD after initial co-design sprint

• Used participatory co-design (Muller & Kuhn tradition) rather than top-down resource drops
• Tailored AI integration specifically to elementary literacy rather than generic ICT

• Teachers reported empowerment, ownership, knowledge-sharing, and enthusiasm through co-design focus groups
• Students reported enjoyable, engaging, meaningful AI-supported literacy experiences

• Students particularly valued perceived gains in understanding literacy concepts and interest in language lessons
• Provides early empirical signals at pilot scale for practitioner-oriented AI literacy integration

Article presents materials and discusses implications for scaling AI-powered elementary literacy with continued co-design and research.

• Student surveys and classroom pilots require ethics approval and parental consent
• Cloud-based GenAI tools need school- and district-level data processing agreements
• Protect minors from inappropriate generated content with monitoring and policy
• Equitable access so AI enrichment does not widen literacy opportunity gaps

• Activity documentation
• Practitioner observation
• Post assessment

• Larger RCT or quasi-experiment on literacy gains with co-designed AI sequences
• Cross-national replication of co-design protocols for other languages

• Elementary literacy education
• Participatory curriculum design with AI
• Generative AI in language teaching

• Completed

Elementary

Formal classrooms (pilot)

Literacy support / GenAI-assisted learning

Co-design + pilot survey

Medium

Medium