Teaching The Machine Underneath — grades 6-8

Learning objectives

What a participant can do afterwards

• Trace the K-12 throughline from silicon to agents and locate the 6-8 band within it.
• State what this curriculum claims about the VA CS SOL — and what it openly does not cover.
• Distinguish a supplemental AI curriculum from a full computer-science course of study.
• Run the Unit 1 gate activity and the Unit 2 representation activity unplugged, start to finish.
• Name the three misconceptions these activities are designed to surface.
• Judge student work against a described standard rather than against effort.
• Answer 'is it thinking?' in a way that is honest, age-appropriate, and does not close the question.
• Frame bias and model error as consequences of mechanism rather than as villainy or as inevitability.
• Respond to a parent objection without conceding ground that is not yours to concede.
• Apply the provided rubrics to real student work without drifting into effort grading.
• Identify which evidence to collect during the unit and which to stop collecting.
• Respond to suspected chatbot-written work in a way that is fair, quick, and survives a parent conversation.
• Sequence the first two weeks of the 6-8 band against your own pacing calendar.
• Adapt the sequence for the constraints and students you actually have.
• Produce a pacing plan specific enough that a colleague could teach from it.

Required artifact

Module 5 — Your first two weeks

Participants produce a dated pacing plan for their own class: a day-by-day table across the first two weeks with real dates, the materials and evidence for each period, the adaptations their roster needs, and a written AI-use rule. It is specific enough that a covering colleague could teach from it.

Format and provider

Provider

Schoolhouse

Format

Asynchronous, self-paced, online

Version

v1.0 · as of 2026-08

Contact hours

5.0

Virginia licensure renewal

Submitted under Option 8, Professional Development Activity, of the Virginia Licensure Renewal Manual (1 point per clock/contact hour, 5-hour minimum). Prior approval by the chief executive officer or designee of the employing educational agency is required before the activity begins.

Schoolhouse awards contact hours. It is not a university and does not grant credit, and no state approval programme exists that would certify a third-party professional-development course in Virginia — approval is your division’s to give.