What it is:

A 4th-grade lesson on machine learning using Google's Teachable Machine.

What I did:

  • Co-teach and co-plan the lesson with my cooperating teacher, Judith, at Friends Seminary school.
  • Adapt Ready AI's lesson plan for artists' styles and fabric patterns.
  • Guide students to train a model on images of famous artists' works (Picasso, Van Gogh, etc.).
  • Address NYS Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards (4-6.IC.5, 4-6.CT.1, 4-6.CT.3).

We taught this class at Friends Seminary School in NYC on January 6, 7, 8, 9, and 17, 2025, and then a modified version on April 7 and 9 at Cooke School for Special Education (grades 11 & 12).

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Students working with Teachable Machine
Students collaborating on AI project Student presentation on Teachable Machine

During my teaching placement at Friends Seminary school, my cooperating teacher, Judith, and I led our 4th grade students through a lesson using Google’s Teachable Machine. We based our lesson on Ready AI’s lesson, modifying it to focus on colors and artistic styles rather than fish identification. Students used images of famous artists’ works, trained the model to recognize distinctive styles (Picasso, Van Gogh, etc.), and deliberately set aside some images as a testing set that the model would never see during training.

Our lesson addresses NYS Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards, particularly 4-6.IC.5 (explaining how computer systems play a role in human decision-making) and 4-6.CT.1 (developing a computational model showing changes in output when inputs change).

The most valuable learning moment came when testing the “never seen” images, addressing standard 4-6.CT.3 (visualizing data to highlight relationships). Students were curious why certain artistic styles were easier for the machine to identify than others, and developed hypotheses about feature recognition.

For more information about the NYS Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards for grades 4-6 please see here.