Grades 5-6

AI Around Us

Students develop foundational AI literacy — recognizing AI in their lives, understanding that AI is made by humans, and beginning to think critically about how AI affects people.

Units (4)

Unit 1

What Is Intelligence?

4-5 weeks

Students explore what intelligence means by examining human and animal intelligence, then begin to understand how machines can perceive and respond to their environment. They recognize AI systems around them and start to understand that intelligence involves sensing, learning, and making decisions.

PerceptionSocietal Impact

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Unit 2

Rules, Patterns, and Decisions

4-5 weeks

Students dive into how AI systems use rules and patterns to make decisions. Through unplugged activities and visual programming, they learn about logic, pattern recognition, and representation. They explore how data is organized into rules that machines can follow.

Representation & ReasoningLearning

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Unit 3

Learning from Data

4-5 weeks

Students explore how AI learns from data. They collect, organize, and analyze data to make discoveries. Through hands-on activities and optional use of Teachable Machine, they understand training, testing, accuracy, and bias in machine learning.

LearningSocietal Impact

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Unit 4

AI and Us — Capstone

3-4 weeks

Students synthesize learning from Units 1-3 to explore how AI affects society and how humans interact with AI. Through research, creative projects, and discussions, they develop critical perspectives on AI's benefits and risks. The unit culminates in a capstone project where students propose an AI solution or raise awareness about AI ethics.

Natural InteractionSocietal Impact

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Tools Used

Case study materialsCreative tools (Canva, Adobe Spark, iMovie)Data visualization tools (Google Charts, Canva)Decision trees and algorithm visualizersDiscussion facilitation guidesEveryday AI observation toolsFlowchart tools (Lucidchart, draw.io)Google Quick DrawGoogle Sheets or Excel for data organizationPattern recognition gamesPresentation tools (Google Slides, Prezi)Real datasets (Kaggle, Google Dataset Search)Research databases and news sourcesScratch Jr. / Scratch (block-based coding)Teachable Machine (Image Classification)Video examples of animal intelligence

Grade Level

5-6

Total Units