AIQ
AIQ
Part of the Your AI Invention lesson guide. Teaching a different grade? 🌈 Explorer (5–7) · 💻 Hacker (11–14) · ⚡ Architect (15–18)
Frame this as the payoff lesson — everything in World 6 (and really, all of AIQ) has been building toward this moment. Open with energy:
"This is it — your capstone project! Combine everything to INVENT an AI solution for a problem you care about!"
Ask the class to shout out, popcorn-style, one thing they remember learning in AIQ — anything from how computers see, to how AI learns from examples, to why fairness matters. Write five or six answers on the board. Then say:
"Look at that list. You already know more about how AI works than most adults do. Today you're not learning something new — you're using everything on this board to invent something of your own."
Run a quick warm-up to prime problem-finding: give each student a sticky note and sixty seconds to write down one problem — at school, at home, or in their community — that genuinely bothers them. Emphasize it doesn't need to be huge. Collect a few examples out loud before moving into the main activity, so the room has heard a range of possible directions.
Watch for two common warm-up traps at this age. The first is a problem so vague it can't be designed for — "school is boring" isn't something an AI system can act on, but "I always forget which days I have PE and don't wear the right shoes" is. The second is a solution disguised as a problem — "I want an AI that draws my art homework for me" describes a shortcut, not a problem worth solving. If either comes up, ask a quick follow-up in front of the class: "Who exactly does this affect, and what actually goes wrong because of it?" Modeling that question once in the warm-up saves a lot of confusion later.
Walk the class through the app's three stages as a structured mini design-workshop. At this age, students should produce something written, even if brief — a sentence, not just a spoken idea. Plan for roughly one class period: about 10 minutes for choosing a problem, 15–20 minutes for designing the solution, and the remainder for building and giving the presentation. If your schedule only allows a shorter block, it's better to slow down and do all four parts of Stage 2 well for a simpler problem than to rush through a more ambitious one.
Present the four categories the app uses and give one real example of each, drawing where possible from Philippine classroom life:
"School problems: bullying detection, personalized tutoring, homework help, or scheduling — school is full of AI opportunities. World problems: climate tracking, protecting endangered animals, reducing food waste, or disaster response — think big! Home problems: smart recycling, saving energy, pet care, or family scheduling — start where you live. Community problems: accessibility tools, translation help, elderly care, or local traffic — help the people around you."
Have each student circle one category and write down their specific problem on their sticky note or a worksheet, using their warm-up idea as a starting point where it fits. Encourage — but don't require — Filipino classroom or community details: a jeepney-route scheduling problem, a sari-sari store inventory problem, or a barangay flood-alert problem are all fair game and often produce more specific, better-thought-through ideas than a generic imported example would.
A student who can't settle on one category is usually overthinking the choice rather than lacking ideas. A quick fix: ask them to pick whichever category their warm-up sticky note already falls into, even if a different one sounds more exciting — this capstone rewards applying the process well, not picking the most impressive-sounding problem in the room.
This stage has four parts. Walk through each one with the class before releasing them to work individually.
"Part one — The Problem. Write ONE clear sentence: WHO has this problem, WHAT is the problem, and WHY does it matter? Part two — The Data. What data would your AI need? Pictures, text, numbers, sensor readings? Where would it come from? Part three — The AI Part. Which kind of AI fits — does it need to sort things into groups (classification), guess what happens next (prediction), make something new (generation), or suggest things (recommendation)? Part four — The Ethics. Could your AI be biased? Who might it affect? What happens when it's wrong? Plan for these!"
Model this live with one example on the board before students work on their own — for instance, a "smart recycling sorter" idea: problem sentence about a school that mixes recyclables; data would be photos of trash items; the AI part would be classification (sorting an item into a bin category); ethics would include "what if it sorts something wrong — does that discourage kids from recycling at all?"
Give students 10–15 minutes to fill out their own four parts, either on paper or a simple worksheet. Circulate and ask "what data would this actually need?" to any student whose plan is still vague.
Part 3 — matching an AI technique — is usually where students need the most help, since the four options (classification, prediction, generation, recommendation) were introduced across different earlier lessons and this is the first time students have to choose between them rather than being told which one applies. A quick way to help a stuck student: ask "does your AI need to sort something into a category (classification), guess a number or an outcome that hasn't happened yet (prediction), create something brand new like a picture or text (generation), or suggest an option a person might like (recommendation)?" Most real ideas map cleanly onto one of these once framed as a direct choice.
"Draw It — a poster, diagram, or storyboard showing how it works. Tell the Story — 'Meet Sarah. She has problem X. My AI does Y. Now Sarah can Z.' Stories make inventions real! Show Impact — how many people would this help? How much time, money, or effort would it save? Numbers make it concrete. Share It — present to your family, friends, or class; explaining your invention teaches you as much as building it!"
Give students time to sketch their poster and write their two- or three-sentence story using the Sarah template, then rehearse it once with a partner before presenting to the class. Partner rehearsal matters more at this age than it might seem — students often discover, while saying their pitch out loud for the first time, that a piece of their plan doesn't actually make sense yet, and it's far better to catch that with a partner than during the real presentation.
When students present to the class, ask each presenter one genuine follow-up question drawn from their own poster — "how would your AI actually get the data it needs?" or "what happens the first time it gets the answer wrong?" This keeps the audience listening actively rather than just waiting their turn, and it previews the kind of question-and-answer format students will meet again, more formally, in later grades.
Time management tip: if the class is large, presentations can eat the whole remaining period. Cap each one at roughly one minute (poster held up, the Sarah story spoken, one number of impact, one question from the teacher) and keep a visible timer running. Students who need more depth can always add detail to their worksheet even after their spoken turn is done.
If a student misses one of these on the in-app quiz, the fastest fix is to point them back to their own worksheet from Stage 2 rather than re-explaining the concept in the abstract — "look at what you wrote for Part 4, The Ethics — that's exactly what this question is asking about" tends to land better than a generic restatement of the rule, because it's grounded in a decision the student actually made.
Close with: "Every single project up here today combines everything you've learned this year — finding real problems, understanding what AI can and can't do, thinking about fairness, and telling a story that makes people care. That's not a small thing. That's what real inventors and engineers do." If your school or class tracks the AIQ badge system, mention that completing this capstone earns the "AI Inventor" badge, one of the rarer ones in the app — a small, concrete marker of finishing something genuinely harder than an ordinary lesson.
Extension activity: Run a short "gallery walk and vote." Post every student's poster around the room. Give each student three sticky-dot votes to place next to the ideas they think would help the most people, are the most fair, or are the most creative (three separate categories, one dot each). Tally the results as a class and discuss why certain ideas stood out — this stretches the lesson into a fuller period and gives every student feedback beyond just their teacher's.
If time allows, follow the vote with a short reflection: ask the students whose ideas got the most "most fair" votes to explain, in one sentence, what they did in Part 4 (The Ethics) that other students might borrow for their own future projects. This turns the strongest examples in the room into a quick, peer-taught mini-lesson rather than leaving the ethics thinking as something only the teacher evaluates.