A Minnesota teacher with 32 years in the classroom was struck by how easily Gemini could rewrite a text for a third- or fifth-grade reading level. She also pastes in short stories to get comprehension questions, asking specifically for the type she needs, such as questions about sequence.
Rewrite the text below so a [AGE]-year-old who reads at about [LEVEL OR SCHOOL YEAR] level can understand it. Keep all the important facts, use short sentences and explain any tricky words in brackets. Then write [NUMBER] [TYPE, E.G. SEQUENCE] comprehension questions with answers. Text: [PASTE TEXT].
Replace the [PLACEHOLDERS] with your own details before you send it.
How to try it
- Paste the article, story or worksheet into Gemini with the child’s age and reading level.
- Be specific about the kind of questions you want, as the teacher found that gave better results.
- Read the simplified version yourself to check nothing important has changed or gone missing.
More learning use cases
Track down a book whose title you’ve forgotten with ChatGPT
A Hacker News user had long forgotten the title and author of a book they'd once read, and searching online got nowhere. Not expecting much, they gave ChatGPT a brief summary of the story and it correctly guessed the book.
I'm trying to remember a book I read around [YEAR OR AGE]. Here's what I remember: [PLOT, CHARACTERS, SETTING, COVER, ANYTHING ELSE]. Give me your five best guesses with the author and year, and for each one explain which details match and which don't. Ask me questions if that would help narrow it down.
Turn your ‘read later’ pile into a short audio summary with NotebookLM
An XDA writer fed NotebookLM the links from about 30 old 'read later' bookmarks and generated an Audio Overview. The 15-minute discussion pulled out the key ideas and showed which three articles were worth reading properly.
These sources are articles I saved to read later about [TOPICS]. Group them by theme, give me the three or four big ideas they share, and tell me which [NUMBER] articles are most worth reading in full and why. Point out any that mostly repeat the others.
Make maths practice fun with personalised stories from Grok
A home-schooling parent whose son found reading and maths hard, but loved dragons and cats, asked Grok for adventure stories starring him that slipped in some maths. He kept asking for more, and afterwards they had Grok create a picture of each story's scenery.
Write a short adventure story for my [AGE]-year-old, [CHILD'S NAME], who loves [INTERESTS, E.G. DRAGONS AND CATS]. Weave in [NUMBER] maths questions about [TOPIC, E.G. ADDING UP TO 20] that the hero has to solve to carry on, plus a few real facts about [ANIMAL OR SUBJECT]. Keep the words easy enough for a [READING LEVEL] reader, and put the answers at the end for me.
Reference: Google Public Policy