Reimagining Reading and Writing: AI in English Classrooms

AI is not replacing reading and writing. It is reshaping how students encounter text, develop meaning and build writing confidence across subjects.

Jun 15, 2025

This post is part of a series exploring how schools can integrate AI meaningfully, ethically and strategically. It offers insights and strategies for educators across all curricula and contexts, from Dubai to Dublin, Delhi to Durban and everywhere in between.

Subscribers get exclusive access to adaptable classroom tasks, planning templates, and CPD slides for AI-supported reading and writing instruction.

While this post focuses on English classrooms, the approaches and examples apply equally to reading and writing instruction in any language of instruction, including Arabic or bilingual programmes. The underlying principles remain the same wherever reading, writing, analysis and text production sit at the core of learning.

Why This Matters

Reading and writing sit at the heart of every subject. As AI tools become more widely available in English classrooms, they bring new possibilities for scaffolding, personalising and accelerating reading and writing development. But they also bring significant risks to fluency, comprehension, authorial intent and authentic voice if not used with care.

The goal is not to automate written work. The goal is to strengthen students’ ability to read critically, write thoughtfully and engage deeply with increasingly complex texts across genres and subject disciplines.

Importantly, AI-generated summaries often flatten nuance, remove subtext, and lose the author’s craft, particularly in poetry, satire, persuasive texts, and culturally rich narratives. Higher-order comprehension requires close reading, authorial analysis, and purposeful questioning, all of which remain firmly in the teacher’s domain.

One of the most valuable skills we can build is teaching students to critically evaluate AI-generated content, to question accuracy, bias, tone and appropriateness rather than passively accept machine-generated text.

What AI Can (and Cannot) Do for Reading and Writing

AI tools offer a growing range of features designed to support reading comprehension and writing tasks. But while these tools can assist with certain mechanical or structural elements of text production, they remain limited when it comes to nuance, interpretation and writing craft. This distinction is especially important for teachers as they evaluate whether AI use enhances or undermines student learning.

In evaluating where AI belongs in reading and writing instruction, it is helpful to distinguish clearly between what AI can assist with and where professional teaching remains absolutely essential:

• AI can generate summaries, but often flattens nuance, author intent and subtext, especially in poetry, rhetoric or persuasive writing. It may also produce hallucinations, confident but incorrect statements.
• AI can suggest vocabulary lists, but it cannot build morphological understanding, etymology, word families, or contextual word depth.
• AI can model basic writing structures, but it cannot teach students how to develop argument strength, narrative craft, or rhetorical technique.
• AI can translate or paraphrase, but it cannot fully preserve cultural meaning, idiomatic expression or sophisticated stylistic features essential in literary study.

Unchecked AI use in writing risks compromising students’ ownership of their ideas, voice and academic integrity. AI must serve as a scaffold, not a substitute.

The ‘Teacher First, AI Second’ Model for Reading and Writing

To ensure AI enhances rather than replaces professional judgement, teachers need clear mental models for where and how to incorporate AI tools. The model here centres on teacher expertise first, with AI positioned as a supportive resource that scaffolds specific stages of the reading and writing process. At no point does AI replace teacher modelling, deep questioning or student agency.

The key stages where AI can serve as a supportive tool include:

• Pre-reading preparation: AI generates preview questions, background knowledge prompts or scaffolded summaries which teachers adapt for specific cohorts.
• Vocabulary support: AI surfaces Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary linked to texts. Teachers build depth through morphology, etymology, word families, multiple exposures and contextualised practice.
• Genre modelling: AI can generate basic outlines for expository and functional writing. Narrative, persuasive, and analytical writing require direct teacher modelling of structure, literary craft, and stylistic development.
• Revision and editing: AI highlights surface-level grammar or cohesion issues. Deeper editing, argument strength, cohesion, tone, remains a teacher-student dialogue.
• Cross-language transfer (when applicable): For bilingual learners, AI offers draft translations or word suggestions. Teachers review for cultural accuracy, register and idiomatic appropriateness.

In Practice: Real Classroom Examples

Across primary and secondary English classrooms, teachers are already finding creative ways to embed AI tools in writing instruction without compromising the teacher’s role as expert guide. These examples reflect real-world classroom practice where AI is positioned as a springboard for deeper reflection, rather than as a final product:

• Primary English: Students generate simple AI-created story outlines, then revise collaboratively to enrich vocabulary, tone and cultural reference, guided by the teacher.
• Secondary Literature: Students compare multiple AI-generated summaries of literary texts (poetry, novel extracts), identifying omissions, misinterpretations, stylistic loss and bias.
• Argumentative Writing: Students prompt AI to generate arguments for both sides of a debate topic, then critically assess reasoning, evidence quality, and rhetorical strength.
• Editing as a skill: Students correct AI-generated drafts, identifying tone shifts, factual errors, stylistic weaknesses and structure issues as part of revision practice.
• Support for Multilingual Learners: AI supports scaffolded sentence structures or model text fragments for EAL learners. Students build independence with explicit teacher modelling and correction.

“AI gives a draft. The real learning happens when students interrogate, refine, and own the language.” - Literacy Lead

Next Steps for Leaders

For senior leaders and heads of department, building coherent policies around AI and writing instruction requires a clear-eyed assessment of both opportunities and risks. Rather than jumping into tool adoption, leaders should focus first on staff training, curriculum mapping, and safeguarding student agency as AI enters the writing classroom.

The following leadership actions can help frame effective and responsible use:

Reading and Writing Mapping – Audit where AI tools align or conflict with reading and writing outcomes across subjects.
Staff CPD – Train teachers to analyse AI-generated text critically for bias, structure, and writing development appropriateness.
Genre Awareness – Support staff in recognising where AI supports expository and functional writing, but cannot model authentic narrative or persuasive craft.
Academic Integrity – Reinforce responsible use policies, ensuring students understand ownership, plagiarism and originality risks.
Parental Communication – Provide clear guidance for parents on AI’s role in reading and writing support at home.
Ongoing Review – Schedule regular reviews of how AI tools impact writing quality, staff workload and student learning ownership.

Useful Links

1. The Confident Teacher — AI, Literacy, and Reading Comprehension

🔗 https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2023/09/artificial-intelligence-literacy-and-reading-comprehension/

A literacy expert’s reflection on how AI influences comprehension and reading instruction, with clear classroom implications.

2. TeachThought — AI in the English Language Arts Classroom

🔗 https://www.teachthought.com/technology/ai-in-the-english-language-arts-classroom/

A practical guide for English teachers exploring how AI tools fit into reading, writing and grammar instruction.

Reflective Question

Where does AI currently support your students’ reading and writing development and where might it risk replacing the deeper skills we value most?

AI in Education Blog Series – Full List

This 4-week series explores how schools can embed AI meaningfully, ethically and strategically across curriculum, CPD, leadership and inclusion. New posts are published four times a week throughout June 2025.

Week 1: Orientation – Understanding the Shift

1. Why AI in Schools Is a Pedagogical Shift, Not a Tech Trend

2. How to Talk to Students About AI (Even When You’re Not an Expert)

3. Bridging the Gap: What Parents and Teachers Need to Understand About AI

4. How Ready Is Your School for AI? A Leadership Reflection

Week 2: Teaching, Equity and Ethics

5. Planning with AI Without Losing Professional Judgement

6. Are We Teaching Students to Think Ethically About AI?

7. What Inclusive AI Use Looks Like in EAL and SEND Contexts

8. Keeping Students Safe: The New Rules of AI and Safeguarding

Week 3: Teaching Across Subjects

9. (You are here) Reimagining Reading and Writing: AI in English Classrooms (and Beyond)