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Explain a four-day school week study to your classmates

Practice: Saying who it's for. About 5 minutes.

About this exercise

Your district is voting on a four-day school week on December 10, and you're writing a short brief for the student newspaper. You want at most 3 sentences in plain text that say what the study actually found about test scores, name one limit of the study, and mention the December 10 vote. Use the full report, not the press release headline, and skip research jargon like "standard deviation" or "cohort".

Common mistakes when you ask AI for this

  • Trusting the headline. Press releases spin results, and the AI often repeats the headline because it's the first thing in the material. Try: Say: "Use the report findings, not the press release headline."
  • Dropping the caveat. A short summary cuts the limits first, so readers think the study applies to your district. Try: Add: "Name one limit of the study."
  • Forgetting the reader. The AI writes like a research summary, with jargon your classmates skip, and doesn't know why they should care now. Try: Say: "For high school readers, no jargon, and mention the Dec 10 vote."
  • Not capping the length. The AI writes several paragraphs by default, far more than the reader will take in. Try: Say: "at most 3 sentences."
  • Getting markdown back. AI defaults to bold labels and headings, which show up as stray symbols in the newspaper's layout file. Try: Ask for "plain text, no bold, no headings."

What a strong prompt includes

  • Ignores the headline spin
  • Asks for a limit
  • Says who it's for
  • Mentions the vote
  • Caps the number of sentences

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