Campfire Session — English Language Arts

Learn practical ways to support English Language Arts in Flint, such as close reading, writing, revision, grammar, and research.

Jacob Edington, Head of Customer Success at Flint

In this English Language Arts with Flint Campfire Session, we focused on practical, classroom-ready ways to use Flint to strengthen reading, writing, grammar, and research—while keeping student thinking at the center. The session highlighted how teachers can use chats and activities to scaffold ELA skill-building, differentiate support, and get more actionable insight into student progress through teacher-controlled feedback, rubrics, and analytics.

Content covered in this session includes:

• Context-setting on AI in schools, drawing on remarks from Bridget Phillipson (UK Secretary of State for Education) at BETT to frame how AI is being positioned as distinct from mobile devices, and how it can support inclusion, ambition, and SEND/learning needs.

• Real teacher share-outs on high-impact ELA use cases, including using Flint for revision and proofreading conferences students can do independently, and using Flint’s activity feedback to write more specific report card comments with less guesswork.

• An overview of core ELA workflows in Flint, including when to use chats (brainstorming, rubrics, worksheets, updating existing materials) versus activities (interactive practice, scaffolded writing, close reading, reading comprehension, and research support).

• Live demonstration of converting chats into activities, showing how a quick brainstorm in chat can become a student-facing activity using “Start an activity builder,” reducing copy/paste and speeding up lesson creation.

• A sample grammar activity build (“Grammar Detective Challenge”) with a structured attempt system (three tries with escalating hints), plus rubric-aligned feedback to keep practice targeted without giving away answers immediately.

• How to troubleshoot and improve activities using Sparky, including copying an activity’s instructions into chat, identifying why the activity isn’t behaving as intended, and revising prompts so Sparky follows “do” and “do not” constraints more reliably.

• Examples of ELA activity design patterns, including a “silent writing” activity where Sparky does not respond during timed writing, then returns simple metrics (length, errors, summary) after students submit—useful for protecting writing time and streamlining review.

• Strategies for scaffolding multi-step writing and research, emphasizing that breaking one large “lesson” into smaller connected activities improves Sparky’s reliability and makes the student experience clearer (topic → thesis → outline → annotated bibliography → draft/grammar check).

• Demonstrations of diverse ELA activity formats, including oral reading practice where students record themselves and Sparky provides strengths and growth areas, and a role-play “mystery” review experience for texts like To Kill a Mockingbird to surface comprehension gaps through interactive questioning.

• Guidance on addressing AI skepticism and classroom logistics, including how students access activities in Flint (individual student work, privacy between students, teacher visibility into activity interactions), and how the Public Library can accelerate adoption through duplication and adaptation.

• Discussion of platform settings that shape school-wide use, including admin-controlled “Mission & Background” context, customization for faith-based or mission-aligned framing, and moderation categories/alerts that can reflect school policies and support student safety.

• Q&A on implementation details and current limitations, including activity deadlines/date behavior (flagged as a case to investigate), document upload considerations (large texts may need to be split), handwriting accuracy variability, and the current lack of true “resume where you left off” for timed activities (with a workaround via student context).

Slides from the presentation can be found here.

Got more questions, comments, or feedback for this topic? Feel free to raise them within the Flint Community.

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Introduction • 00:00

• Jacob introduces the session and agenda.

Ice-breaking news • 00:49

• Participants discuss engaging questions and sharing effective practices with students during the session.

• A recognition of Canadian contributions is shared, noting notable performance from Canada.

English Language Arts in Flint • 07:29

• Sparky-driven activity building is demonstrated from a basic prompt, showing automatic outline generation and the option to start an activity builder.

• A creative writing assignment example is discussed, including setup and expectations for student output.

• The speaker demonstrates multiple Flint activities: researching topics, outlining, and gathering sources for a research paper.

• A discussion of providing real-time feedback to students, setting parameters, and speeding up the first draft return to learners.

Teacher roundtable discussion on ELA in Flint • 23:05

• Tanja Gubser describes crafting highly specific, shareable teacher comments using Flint outputs and external AI tools, and mentions time tradeoffs.

• Tammy Craddock shares positive experiences with Flint, highlighting better feedback, differentiation, and gap-bridging compared to Magic School.

Learning goals and background in Flint • 35:46

• Admins can import and customize mission/background context for school-wide or teacher-level use, including faith-based or IB context, to tailor responses.

• Moderation and safety features can be adjusted, including flagging for inappropriate language or self-harm content, with customization tied to school handbooks or local policies.

• Administrators can review all chats, but teachers cannot see student chats; inappropriate content triggers flags for support.

• A suggestion is made to implement an AI usage level (0-4) that can auto-apply to activities, potentially saving time for teachers; discussion covers how it could be uploaded and managed by admins or teachers.

Setting assignment deadlines in Flint • 50:23

• Participants discuss issues with Sparky assignment dates; a closing date issue and a possible knowledge-base update affecting behavior are noted.

• Jacob guides Malloy through checking manual build and activity settings, suggesting a potential correlation between changes and earlier issues.

Conclusion • 52:29

• To learn more, folks can go to the Campfire Calendar, Flint's Instagram (which has a bunch of teacher-facing content), and the Flint Community.