Tool Setup Guides

Step-by-step setup, troubleshooting, and classroom use for every tool named in the book. 🟢 Easy · 🟡 Moderate · 🔴 Takes practice

Quick index

Google Docs ChatGPT Claude Gemini Grammarly LanguageTool Padlet SKELL Hypothesis Quill

Google Docs 🟢 · used in Chapters 3, 6, 7, 8, 12

Purpose: A free, cloud-based word processor that makes revision history, suggesting-mode peer feedback, and voice typing available to any class with browser access.

[Screenshot placeholder: Google Docs main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Go to docs.google.com and sign in with a school or personal Google account.
Create a new document and rename it using a consistent class naming convention (e.g., Class-StudentName-Task).
Share with students or classmates via the Share button, setting permission to 'Comment' or 'Editor' as appropriate.
Turn on Suggesting mode (top-right dropdown, currently set to 'Editing') for peer-review tasks so changes are proposed, not applied directly.
Use Tools → Voice typing for students who benefit from speaking ideas before typing them.

Common problems and solutions

Students editing directly instead of suggesting → require Suggesting mode for all peer-review tasks and check the mode before reading submissions.
Lost work from accidental deletion → use File → Version history → See version history to restore any previous draft.
Students unable to access shared docs on shared family devices → use 'Anyone with the link can comment' for low-stakes tasks instead of requiring individual logins.

Classroom use example

During a peer-review lesson, pair students and require each reader to leave at least two comments and one suggested edit using Suggesting mode before the writer is allowed to revise.

Best-practice recommendations

Always check Suggesting mode is on before a peer-review lesson begins.
Use Revision History to assess individual contribution in group-written documents.
Pair Voice Typing with the speed-write activities in Chapter 2 for perfectionist-shutdown students.

Teacher perspective

Reduces marking time on group projects because Revision History shows exactly who wrote what, even when the final document looks seamless.

Student perspective

Suggesting mode feels safer than editing directly - it doesn't feel like 'ruining' a classmate's work, which makes students more willing to give honest feedback.

ChatGPT 🟢 · used in Chapters 5, 8–11

Purpose: A general-purpose AI chatbot, useful for brainstorming, explaining grammar, generating model texts, and answering CLEAR-built prompts.

[Screenshot placeholder: ChatGPT main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Go to chat.openai.com and create a free account (an email address is sufficient; no payment required for the free tier).
Start a new chat and paste a CLEAR-built prompt (see Chapter 5 and the AI Prompt Library).
Read the output critically before sharing it with students - check for hallucinated facts or overly advanced vocabulary.
For repeated classroom prompts, save them in a separate document so the same CLEAR prompt can be reused across classes.

Common problems and solutions

Generic, overly polished output → add explicit Audience and Length constraints to the prompt; vague prompts produce vague results.
Free-tier usage limits during peak hours → have a backup prompt ready in Claude or Gemini for the same task.
Students pasting whole essays for AI to 'fix' → enforce the AI Collaboration Log requirement (Chapter 5) so every AI interaction is visible and accountable.

Classroom use example

Give students a CLEAR prompt template with blanks to fill in (topic, level, length, audience) rather than free-form access, so the first thing they learn is prompt structure, not just chatting.

Best-practice recommendations

Never let AI output go directly into a final submission - always require a human revision pass.
Demonstrate at least one hallucinated 'fact' live in class early in the term to build healthy scepticism.
Keep a personal library of three or four CLEAR prompts you reuse across units.

Teacher perspective

The single biggest time-saver for generating differentiated reading passages and model texts at multiple CEFR levels for the same lesson.

Student perspective

Feels less intimidating than asking a teacher for help repeatedly - useful for shy students, as long as they know the rules for what they may and may not ask it to do.

Claude (Anthropic) 🟢 · used in Chapter 5

Purpose: An AI assistant well-suited to longer-form feedback and nuanced explanation, often producing more measured, less generic prose than other chatbots.

[Screenshot placeholder: Claude (Anthropic) main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Go to claude.ai and create a free account.
Start a conversation and paste a full student paragraph or essay along with a clear feedback request (e.g., 'Give two strengths, two areas to improve, and one guiding question - do not rewrite the text').
Review the feedback for tone and accuracy before sharing it with the student.
For repeated use, save your preferred feedback-request wording so the format stays consistent across submissions.

Common problems and solutions

Free tier message limits reset on a rolling basis - pace heavy classroom use across the day rather than all at once.
Overly long, dense replies - explicitly ask for a fixed number of points (e.g., 'no more than 150 words total').

Classroom use example

Use Claude for the AI-assisted feedback workflow in Chapter 19 and the AI Feedback Tool page: paste a paragraph, request structured feedback only, never a rewrite.

Best-practice recommendations

Always request feedback in a fixed format so it is easy to scan quickly across many students.
Ask explicitly for guiding questions rather than corrected text, to preserve student ownership of the revision.

Teacher perspective

Particularly useful for the multi-agent feedback system in Chapter 21, where longer, structured outputs are needed.

Student perspective

Tends to sound less like a robot than other tools, which some students find easier to actually read and act on.

Google Gemini 🟢 · used in Chapter 5

Purpose: Google's AI assistant, integrated directly into Google Docs, useful for in-document vocabulary help and quick research without leaving the writing environment.

[Screenshot placeholder: Google Gemini main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Open a Google Doc and look for the Gemini icon in the top-right toolbar (availability depends on your Google Workspace settings).
Highlight a sentence or paragraph and ask Gemini for a vocabulary upgrade or clarity check directly within the document.
For research tasks, open Gemini in a separate tab and ask for a short, cited summary of a topic before students begin an expository or argumentative draft.

Common problems and solutions

Feature not visible → check with your school's Workspace administrator, since Gemini in Docs requires certain account settings to be enabled.
Inconsistent integration across personal vs. school accounts → have a fallback plan using the standalone Gemini app.

Classroom use example

During drafting, students highlight one sentence they're unsure about and ask Gemini for one alternative phrasing, then decide themselves whether to use it.

Best-practice recommendations

Use the in-document integration only for short, targeted checks - not whole-paragraph generation.
Treat its research summaries as a starting point for source evaluation, not a final citation.

Teacher perspective

Saves the back-and-forth of switching tabs for small in-draft vocabulary questions.

Student perspective

Feels like a natural extension of the writing tool itself rather than a separate 'AI moment,' which lowers the sense of novelty-as-distraction.

Grammarly 🟢 · used in Chapter 6

Purpose: A grammar and style checker best used as a diagnostic tool that explains errors, not a crutch that silently fixes them.

[Screenshot placeholder: Grammarly main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Go to grammarly.com and create a free account, or install the browser extension.
Paste or write directly in the Grammarly editor; suggestions appear inline.
Click each suggestion individually to read the explanation before accepting or rejecting it - never use 'Accept All.'

Common problems and solutions

Students click Accept All without reading explanations → require the seven-step diagnostic protocol from Chapter 7 for any graded use.
Free tier flags fewer issues than Premium → supplement with LanguageTool for a second pass on style-level issues.

Classroom use example

Run the Grammar Detective activity (Chapter 7): students must explain in their own words what error each suggestion fixes before deciding whether to accept it.

Best-practice recommendations

Never grade a draft that shows zero remaining Grammarly suggestions as automatically 'correct' - some suggestions are wrong.
Pair with the diagnostic protocol every time, not just occasionally.

Teacher perspective

Cuts down on repetitive correction of the same mechanical errors, freeing class feedback time for content and structure.

Student perspective

Can feel like 'getting in trouble' if used punitively - frame it explicitly as a practice tool, not a test.

LanguageTool 🟢 · used in Chapter 7

Purpose: An open-source grammar and style checker, useful as a free alternative or second opinion alongside Grammarly.

[Screenshot placeholder: LanguageTool main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Go to languagetool.org and use the free web editor, or install the browser extension.
Paste student text and review flagged issues by category (grammar, style, punctuation).
Use alongside Grammarly to cross-check ambiguous suggestions.

Common problems and solutions

Occasional false positives on informal register → teach students to ask 'does this rule apply in this context?' rather than accepting automatically.

Classroom use example

Use as the second check in a two-tool diagnostic pass: Grammarly first, LanguageTool second, discrepancies discussed as a class.

Best-practice recommendations

Free and ad-supported - confirm your school's browser/extension policy before classroom-wide rollout.

Teacher perspective

A genuinely free fallback when a class doesn't have Grammarly Premium access.

Student perspective

Functions almost identically to Grammarly from a student's point of view, so switching tools doesn't require re-teaching the protocol.

Padlet 🟡 · used in Chapters 4, 7

Purpose: A free digital noticeboard for posting sticky notes, images, or short texts - ideal for brainstorming and asynchronous idea-sharing.

[Screenshot placeholder: Padlet main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Go to padlet.com and create a free account.
Click '+ Make a Padlet' and choose a layout (Wall is the most flexible for brainstorming).
Share the link or QR code with students; enable anonymous posting for low-stakes brainstorming.
Students click the '+' button to add a post - text, image, or link.

Common problems and solutions

Students posting in L1 by default → set a visible class rule and model one English post first; address this directly rather than deleting posts silently.
Free tier limits you to 3 active Padlets → archive completed boards regularly to stay within the limit, or reuse one board across units with clearly labelled sections.

Classroom use example

Use a single shared Padlet wall for a whole-class brainstorm before a narrative or descriptive writing task, then have students select one idea from the board, not necessarily their own, to develop.

Best-practice recommendations

Set the language rule before the activity starts, not after the first L1 post appears.
Archive boards promptly to manage the free-tier limit.

Teacher perspective

An easy way to see every student's initial idea at a glance, including from students who rarely speak up in class discussion.

Student perspective

Lower-stakes than speaking aloud in front of the class, which surfaces more ideas from quieter or more anxious students.

SKELL 🟡 · used in Chapter 6

Purpose: A free corpus tool (Sketch Engine for Language Learning) that shows real collocations, example sentences, and word frequency from authentic text.

[Screenshot placeholder: SKELL main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Go to skell.sketchengine.eu (no account required).
Type a word into the search box and choose 'Word Sketch' to see its typical collocations by grammatical category.
Use 'Examples' to see the word in real, authentic sentences, and 'Similar Words' to find genuinely interchangeable alternatives.

Common problems and solutions

Output can look dense or technical for lower-level students → pre-select 3–4 collocations from the results yourself rather than sending B1 students to browse unsupervised.
No login means no saved history - have students record useful collocations in their own vocabulary log.

Classroom use example

Before a descriptive writing task, look up a key adjective as a class and identify which nouns it actually collocates with, modelling the lookup process before students try it independently.

Best-practice recommendations

Use Word Sketch, not just Examples, when the teaching goal is collocation rather than general usage.
Pair with Ozdic for younger or lower-level classes that find SKELL's interface dense.

Teacher perspective

Catches collocation errors invisible to grammar checkers, since 'exquisite teacher' is grammatically correct but simply not idiomatic.

Student perspective

Initially feels like 'more work' than a thesaurus, but students who use it consistently report fewer 'this sounds weird' comments on their writing.

Hypothesis 🟡 · used in Chapter 8

Purpose: A free collaborative annotation tool that lets a whole class mark up the same text together, useful for paragraph-level peer review.

[Screenshot placeholder: Hypothesis main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Go to hypothes.is and create a free account, or install the browser extension.
Open the shared text (a student paragraph published online, or a PDF) with the extension active.
Highlight a section of text and click the annotation icon to leave a comment visible to the whole group.

Common problems and solutions

Students leaving vague comments ('good job') → provide a sentence-starter bank for annotation comments (e.g., 'This works because...', 'I'm not sure what this means because...').
Setup overhead for a first-time class → run one low-stakes practice annotation before using it for graded peer review.

Classroom use example

Use for the paragraph-unity highlighting activity (Chapter 8): students annotate a shared paragraph, marking which sentences support the topic sentence and which don't.

Best-practice recommendations

Always provide annotation sentence starters for the first few uses until habits form.
Reserve for paragraph- or sentence-level review; whole-essay annotation can become overwhelming.

Teacher perspective

Makes peer-review patterns visible across an entire class at once, rather than scattered across individual papers.

Student perspective

Seeing classmates' annotations on the same shared text normalises disagreement and multiple valid readings of the same paragraph.

Quill 🟡 · used in Chapter 7

Purpose: A free, research-backed platform offering automated sentence-level diagnostic exercises and feedback reports.

[Screenshot placeholder: Quill main interface - replace with your own annotated screenshot before publishing]

Step-by-step setup

Go to quill.org and create a free teacher account, then create a class and add students via class code.
Assign a diagnostic activity matched to the sentence-level error type currently being taught (e.g., fragments, run-ons).
Review the automatically generated student diagnostic reports to identify which error types need re-teaching.

Common problems and solutions

Students working through activities without engaging meaningfully → spot-check by asking a student to explain why their answer was correct, not just whether it was.
Reports can be detailed - schedule 10 minutes weekly specifically to review them rather than letting them accumulate unread.

Classroom use example

After teaching one sentence-error type (e.g., dangling modifiers, Chapter 7), assign a matched Quill activity as homework, then use the diagnostic report to form a small re-teaching group the following lesson.

Best-practice recommendations

Match activities tightly to the specific error type just taught, rather than assigning broad general practice.
Use diagnostic reports to group students for targeted re-teaching, not just as a completion record.

Teacher perspective

Generates individualised diagnostic data without requiring the teacher to mark each sentence by hand.

Student perspective

Immediate feedback on each sentence matches the fast-feedback expectation described in Chapter 1, keeping engagement higher than delayed worksheet marking.

💡 Before adopting any new tool - the CLEAR Evaluation:
C: What problem does this solve in my classroom?
L: Is it appropriate for my students' language level?
E: What does successful classroom use look like?
A: What will students actually produce with it?
R: What should this tool NOT be used for? Name the restriction before students encounter it.