AI Literacy Framework
Animo et Fide — With Courage and Faith
At Saddle River Day School, our children are growing up alongside artificial intelligence. This framework explains, for our families, how students and teachers in each division learn about, use, and think critically about AI — from a Lower School student's first encounters to Upper School students who design AI agents of their own.
What is srds.ai?
srds.ai is an AI platform designed by SRDS, for SRDS. Its content is grounded specifically in our own curriculum, and it is built to enhance the learning experience — giving students and teachers a safe, school-managed place to work with AI rather than relying on open, public tools. Every student and teacher has access.
What does being a "RAIL School" mean?
SRDS is a RAIL school — Responsible AI in Learning — a designation from the Middle States Association, the first global endorsement in AI literacy, safety, and ethics for K–12 schools. It places SRDS among a network of leading schools nationwide committed to using AI responsibly. Learn more about RAIL →
Use
Students learn to engage with AI tools in age-appropriate ways that support curiosity, creativity, and learning — never replacing their own thinking.
Ethics
Students learn how to make responsible, transparent choices about when and how they use AI, in line with SRDS's values of integrity and ethical contribution.
Understanding
Students develop an understanding of how AI actually works — its capabilities, its limitations, and how it shapes the world around them.
Invested in Our Students
As AI becomes increasingly capable of creating content, the most valuable skill will be the ability to clearly express your ideas and communicate exactly what you want. That skill is not taught in one class — it runs through the entire SRDS curriculum.
English builds clarity and voice; math builds structured, logical reasoning; science builds evidence, testing, and healthy skepticism; and the arts build creative judgment. Together they prepare our students to direct AI thoughtfully rather than be directed by it.
Invested in Our Teachers
SRDS teachers receive significant professional development and training in the use of AI: how the tools work, how to teach with AI, and how to teach students to use AI effectively and responsibly.
This ongoing investment means that in every division, students learn AI from adults who use it skillfully themselves.
Curiosity First: Discovering How Computers Learn
Lower School students meet AI the way they meet everything at SRDS — hands-on, through joyful, meaningful exploration, and with a teacher close by. The goal is wonder plus healthy skepticism: AI doesn't "think" on its own; it learns from people.
What Students Do
Students build the foundations of AI literacy without needing to interact with a chatbot. Through unplugged games, stories, and guided activities in the IDEAS Lab, they learn what AI is, where it shows up in daily life, and why it sometimes gets things wrong. Expectations grow with the child, following the IDEAS Lab curriculum maps.
Pre-K – Grade 2- Learn to recognize AI in everyday life — voice assistants, recommendations, smart toys — and talk about what these tools can and can't do.
- Explore how computers learn from patterns through sorting games, prediction challenges, and unplugged "train the robot" activities.
- Begin coding and computational thinking with interactive, hands-on resources such as Bee-Bots, Osmo systems, and Lego robotics in the IDEAS Lab.
- Experience AI only through teacher-guided, whole-group lessons — watching how an adult asks questions, checks answers, and thinks critically alongside AI.
- Begin working on 1:1 devices and typing their own prompts in structured, teacher-supervised activities on srds.ai.
- Deepen coding and computational thinking with Ozobots, Lego robotics, and design challenges in the IDEAS Lab.
- Practice asking clear, specific questions and comparing AI answers with what they learn from books, teachers, and their own observations.
- May go deeper through optional enrichment such as AI Explorers, a hands-on introduction to how people teach computers to think.
- Build the language foundations of AI literacy — describing things clearly, giving step-by-step directions, and expressing ideas precisely in reading and writing.
- Practice digital citizenship: kindness online, asking a trusted adult, and understanding that not everything a computer says is true.
- Interact with kid-friendly, developmentally appropriate, teacher-guided AI tools only — always with an adult, never independently with open chatbots.
How Lower School Teachers Use AI
In the Lower School, AI primarily supports teachers in their preparation rather than being used directly by young students — freeing teachers to spend more time with children. All teachers have access to srds.ai, and their ongoing feedback shapes how the platform evolves.
- Enhance everyday teaching workflows so more time is spent interacting with students and focused on instruction, and less on routine preparation.
- Use srds.ai and other approved tools for planning support, lesson ideas, and age-appropriate activity design.
- Lead whole-group, teacher-guided AI demonstrations so young students see responsible use modeled before they ever type a prompt themselves.
- Differentiate materials: generating leveled reading passages, practice problems, and enrichment tasks matched to each learner.
- Create classroom resources — decodable stories, illustrations, center activities, and rubrics — in a fraction of the usual time.
- Draft parent communications and newsletters, always reviewed and personalized before sending.
- Analyze progress and assessment data to spot students who need extra support or extra challenge sooner.
- Comply fully with SRDS privacy and data-security standards, entering only non-sensitive information into AI tools in keeping with FERPA and COPPA.
- Participate in significant professional development in AI tools, teaching with AI, and preparing students for age-appropriate AI use.
From Users to Questioners: AI as a Thinking Partner
Middle School is where students begin working with AI directly — with structure, supervision, and a constant emphasis on keeping their own voice and judgment at the center.
In the Curriculum: Our Digital & AI Course SequenceDedicated classes every Middle School student takes
Middle School students follow a deliberate, year-by-year sequence of dedicated classes that build digital and AI skills as they mature — so AI literacy is taught explicitly, not just absorbed in passing.
- Grade 5 — Digital Citizenship: foundations of safe, respectful, and responsible behavior online, including how to treat others and evaluate what they encounter.
- Grade 6 — Digital Literacy: finding, evaluating, and using digital information well, and beginning to understand how AI tools fit into that landscape.
- Grade 7 — Digital Fluency: moving from using tools to using them skillfully and purposefully, with growing independence and judgment.
- Grades 7 & 8 — AI and Self-Directed Learning: students learn to use AI to guide and take ownership of their own learning — setting goals, asking better questions, and reflecting on their progress.
What Students Do
All Middle School students have access to srds.ai, the school's own AI platform, and learn to use it as a research and writing partner — asking better questions, checking sources, and being transparent about how AI contributed to their work. By the end of Middle School, all students will have completed the following:
- Used srds.ai and other approved AI tools for brainstorming, outlining, and revision when the teacher permits — and learned clearly when AI use is not allowed.
- Learned prompt fundamentals: asking precise questions, refining follow-ups, and comparing AI answers against reliable sources — putting the skills of clear, accurate expression built across their classes to work as the language AI runs on.
- Evaluated AI output critically, spotting hallucinations, bias, and missing perspectives before trusting a response.
- Practiced disclosing AI use honestly, building the habits of academic integrity that carry into Upper School.
- Studied how AI systems work at a conceptual level — training data, pattern prediction, and why models make mistakes.
- Discussed the ethics of AI in everyday life: privacy, kindness and preventing cyberbullying, avoiding misinformation, and what responsible, proper use looks like both in school and beyond it.
- Used AI to go beyond the confines of the traditional classroom — exploring questions, subjects, and creative projects that once would have been out of reach.
Advanced LevelFor students ready to go deeperOptional Track
Students who want more can pursue deeper AI work through coursework and enrichment opportunities beyond the curriculum that treat AI as a discipline, not just a tool.
- The Right Question: Researching with AI — a hands-on course in advanced prompting, source evaluation, credibility checking, and synthesizing AI-assisted research into original projects.
- Personal Writing Coach: Writing with AI — students build a writing portfolio while learning when to rely on AI, when to challenge it, and how to keep their own voice at the center.
- Project-based extensions through the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, applying AI to real problems students identify in their community.
- Early exposure to machine-learning concepts through robotics, coding electives, and IDEAS Lab challenges.
How Middle School Teachers Use AI
Middle School teachers use AI openly and name it when they do — because the most powerful AI lesson at this age is watching an adult use it well.
- Enhance everyday teaching workflows so more time is spent interacting with students and focused on instruction.
- Use srds.ai alongside students, demonstrating prompting, verification, and revision on the same platform students use.
- Design AI-aware assignments that reward original thinking and make over-reliance on AI both visible and unnecessary.
- Generate differentiated practice, discussion prompts, and project scaffolds tuned to individual students.
- Use AI to give faster, more frequent feedback on drafts — while final assessment always stays with the teacher.
- Credit AI when it contributed to a lesson or resource, modeling the same transparency expected of students.
- Guide classroom conversations about appropriate use, helping students distinguish support from shortcut.
- Comply fully with SRDS privacy and data-security standards, entering only non-sensitive information into AI tools in keeping with FERPA and COPPA.
- Participate in significant professional development and training in AI use, teaching with AI, and teaching students to use AI effectively.
Fluency and Creation: Preparing for an AI-Shaped World
Upper School students graduate as fluent, ethical AI users — and some as AI builders. Every student learns to work alongside these tools with integrity; advanced students learn to engineer them.
What Students Do
All Upper School students have access to srds.ai and learn to use AI as a professional would: strategically, transparently, and with full ownership of the final product. Expectations are made explicit in each course, and integrity is non-negotiable.
- Use srds.ai and approved AI tools for research, drafting, studying, and feedback within each teacher's stated guidelines — with clear disclosure of how AI was used.
- Develop advanced prompting and verification skills: cross-checking claims, tracing sources, and stress-testing AI reasoning — applying the precise written expression developed across their coursework.
- Explore the ethics of AI creativity in the arts — photography, video, and graphic design — including remix and reuse culture versus theft, why copyright protects specific expression rather than style, and the real question of who the artist is when a student generates an image with AI and then edits it. (The U.S. Copyright Office's guidance on AI and human authorship is used as a primary source.)
- Examine AI's broader impact — algorithmic bias, intellectual property, privacy, and its effect on work — chiefly within computer science and other courses where it fits the material, presented in a balanced, nonpartisan way that keeps the focus on core understanding.
- Learn the technical foundations — how large language models are trained, why they hallucinate, and what their limits mean for real work — through computer science courses and school-wide advisory and assembly programming that engages every student.
- Prepare for college and career norms around AI — including when institutions and employers permit, restrict, or require it — with faculty-shared, class-tested prompts that help students refine their own writing (for example, college-essay revision).
- Use AI to go beyond the confines of the traditional classroom — pursuing ambitious questions, projects, and creative work that reflect the real potential of the technology.
Advanced LevelFor students ready to buildOptional Track
Advanced students move from using AI to creating it, through coursework and enrichment opportunities beyond the curriculum that treat AI as an engineering and design discipline.
- Building AI Agents — a project-centered course where students design and construct working AI agents: goal-setting, planning, tool use, memory, and iterative reasoning, tested on real tasks.
- Advanced computer science and machine-learning electives covering programming, model behavior, and responsible system design.
- Applied AI projects through the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship — using AI in startups, research, and community problem-solving.
- The Gateway Diplomas Program for students pursuing AI-related interests in depth, with independent study available as a secondary path.
- Leadership roles: advanced students help lead AI clubs, teach younger students, and shape how the SRDS community uses these tools.
How Upper School Teachers Use AI
Upper School teachers treat AI as a professional tool and a subject of study at once — using it to teach better while continuously redesigning assessment for an AI-rich world.
- Enhance everyday teaching workflows so more time is spent interacting with students and focused on instruction.
- Redesign assessments to emphasize process, oral defense, in-class work, and original analysis that AI cannot substitute for.
- Use srds.ai and other tools for lesson design, differentiated materials, exam preparation resources, and richer feedback cycles.
- Set clear, course-specific AI policies so students always know what's permitted — and discuss the reasoning behind those lines.
- Bring AI into disciplinary content: analyzing its use in science, history, literature, art, and business within their own courses.
- Comply fully with SRDS privacy and data-security standards, entering only non-sensitive information into AI tools in keeping with FERPA and COPPA.
- Participate in significant, ongoing professional development in AI: how the tools work, how to teach with them, and how to teach students to use them effectively.
Academic Integrity & AI
Our AI Policy reflects the SRDS motto: "Teaching students how to think, not what to think."
In the Middle and Upper Schools, AI is a privilege governed by clear expectations. These are the guardrails families and students can count on:
- Permission first. Students may use AI tools only when a teacher has granted explicit permission, in the syllabus or in a specific assignment. Teachers decide what is appropriate in their classrooms.
- Disclosure, not concealment. Students clearly indicate when AI was used and, when asked, must be prepared to show which parts of an assignment involved AI. Failing to disclose AI use results in a failing grade.
- Resolving disputes. Because students can be asked to walk a teacher through their process, drafts, and version history, "did you use AI?" questions are settled by evidence of the student's own work rather than accusation alone.
- No plagiarism. Using AI to plagiarize — including rephrasing others' work to evade detection — is prohibited, as is generating violent, discriminatory, hateful, or false content.
- Verify everything. AI is not always right; students confirm AI information against reliable sources before relying on it.
- Consequences. Using technology or AI beyond these boundaries leads to disciplinary measures, consistent with the Honorable Use Policy.
Our RAIL Commitments
As a Responsible AI in Learning school, SRDS holds every use of AI — by students, teachers, and staff — to the standards of our Honorable Use Policy and AI Policy.
Educational Purpose
All technology and AI use directly supports academic goals and aligns with the curriculum.
Privacy & Data Security
Every user safeguards their own and others' private information. Data entered into AI systems is limited to non-sensitive information and complies with FERPA and COPPA.
Bias & Fairness
Users are taught to recognize bias in AI outputs and report it to a school official to ensure fair and equitable use.
Transparency & Accountability
Designated personnel oversee technology and AI use, with transparency about how and when these tools are used and how data is handled.
Ethical Use
Technology may never be used to harm others or the community — including spreading misinformation or disrespectful language — with clear consequences for breaches.
Reporting & Response
Community members can report misuse or AI bias through a confidential mechanism, with defined protocols for investigation and corrective action.
Every Middle and Upper School student electronically signs the Honorable Use Policy, agreeing to its terms.
Read & sign the SRDS Honorable Use Policy →