know.

CookbookTeaching and coursesNo. 16

A unit study guide for a classone link for students, practice questions inside it

Recipe No. 16Teaching and courses

For
A high-school US history teacher getting a class ready for the Reconstruction unit test
You bring
Your unit plan and lesson notes, the textbook chapter with its page numbers, the primary sources the class read, and the questions you ask every year
You get
A study guide of key terms, concepts, a timeline and practice questions on one read-only link, and a checked draft of test questions for your school’s own quiz tool
Time
An evening for the first unit, then an hour or two per unit
Works in
know.sh on the web · your AI assistant, through MCP
Keep it
Private while you work; share one document by a read-only link when it is ready.

A unit study guide is usually a handout: two sides of paper, written the night before, lost by Wednesday and rewritten next year from memory. Students who were absent get the version without the corrections, and nobody checks whether the practice questions can actually be answered from the guide.

This recipe makes the guide for the Reconstruction unit as one document. Your assistant, whichever one you connect, drafts it from your unit plan and lesson notes: the timeline, the key terms, the big concepts, the primary sources the class read, and practice questions whose answers stay hidden until review day. You fix it up in the editor, and the whole class reads it from one link, on a phone or a library computer. The guide you correct on Tuesday is the one they read on Wednesday.

Then you test the guide before your students do. Ask your assistant for a quiz on it and take the quiz yourself; any question you cannot answer from the guide alone marks a gap. Students cannot take quizzes in know.sh, so the good questions become a draft for your school’s own quiz tool, and the scores stay there.

What you will use

Research document
One document per unit, Unit 5 study guide — Reconstruction, 1865–1877; the overview says what the test covers and when.
Finding
Sections for the timeline, key terms, concepts, sources and practice questions, typed so students can tell a fact from a question.
Your AI assistant
Drafts the guide from your unit plan and notes, writes the quiz that tests it, and drafts a question bank for your quiz tool.
The editor
Where you check every date and name, set the types and Key sections, and put the guide in your own voice.
Quiz
Questions on the guide, which you take yourself to find the gaps before the class does.
The A–Z index
An index of the names that recur across the year’s guides, such as Johnson and Grant, learned from section titles and opening lines.
Public link
One read-only link for the class, with the answers left out until review day.

Method

  1. 1

    Plan the guide as sections, not a handout

    Start from the unit plan, not the textbook. List what a student must know for the test and group it into seven or eight sections: how to use this guide, a timeline, key terms, two or three big concepts, the primary sources the class read, practice questions and their answers. Each section will be a numbered finding, read in that order.

    Decide the overview too: the test date, what it covers, what kinds of question to expect, and where to find help. Keep it to what a student needs the night before.

  2. 2

    Have your assistant draft it from your own materials

    Give your assistant your unit plan, your lesson notes and the page references for the textbook chapter, attached in Claude or ChatGPT or as files a local client can read. Ask it to create the document on your US History shelf with your overview and one finding per section, summarising in plain words with chapter and page numbers so the guide sends students back to the book. Ask for the timeline as a two-column table, and for each primary source the class read, the Library of Congress or National Archives page as a source link on its finding.

    Give it your notes, not the textbook’s own text, and never released AP or other standardised-test questions. What comes back is a first draft of a page you will sign.

  3. 3

    Fix it up in the editor

    Press Edit and read the guide as your students will. Check every date and name against the textbook, rewrite anything that does not sound like you, and drag sections into the order you teach. Set the types as signposts, because students see them on the link: the timeline and sources are Evidence, the concepts are Insight, the practice questions a Question. Mark what the test leans on hardest as Key.

    Open each section with a sentence naming the people it is about. The index learns single capitalised names that recur in finding titles and first lines, so Johnson, Stevens, Grant and Hayes gather in the index to the shelf, unit after unit. Phrases such as the Black Codes never become index terms; find those with Look up (⌘K).

  4. 4

    Test the guide with a quiz

    Ask your assistant for a quiz on Unit 5 study guide. It writes five to ten questions with know.sh’s quiz tools, each citing the sections it came from, and the quiz appears under Quizzes for you to take. Answer from the guide alone, not from what you know.

    Every question you cannot answer from the guide is a gap: a term never defined, a date in the timeline that the concept section never explains. A question that cites the wrong section usually means the guide is ambiguous, and a student would stumble there too. Fix the guide and ask for a fresh quiz. The quiz comes back under Revisit after three days, a week or three weeks, depending on your score: a good moment to reread the guide with fresh eyes.

  5. 5

    Turn the good questions into a draft for your quiz tool

    Students cannot take quizzes in know.sh; a quiz belongs to the person it was made for and has no link of its own. The questions are still useful. Ask your assistant to write fifteen questions on the unit into a new finding, Question bank draft, each with its answer and the section it comes from.

    Read every question as if you were setting the test, because you are. Rewrite, reorder, check each answer against the textbook, and copy the ones you keep into the quiz tool your school uses. Scores and grades live there, never here.

  6. 6

    Share one link, and hold the answers back

    Press Share, set the expiry to the day after the test, or leave it with no expiry (the default) if the guide will serve the final exam too, and copy the link as soon as it appears: it is shown once. From the Answers finding’s own page and from the Question bank draft’s, choose to leave them out of the link.

    Post the link on your class page. On review day, include the Answers finding again; the same link now shows it, and nobody needs a new handout. After the test, the share panel’s read count tells you roughly how often the guide was opened, and nothing about who opened it.

  7. 7

    Carry it forward to next year

    Leave margin notes as you teach — “Half the class mixed up the Black Codes and the later Jim Crow laws; add a line on the difference” — and they will be beside the passage when you revise. Notes and highlights never appear on the link, so they can be frank.

    Next year, open the same document, act on your notes and change the dates. The revisions keep this year’s guide, each change marked as yours or the assistant’s.

Specimen

Unit 5 study guideReconstruction, 1865–1877

Shared from a library on know. 7 findings.

Our unit test is on Friday 6 November: thirty multiple-choice questions, two short answers and one paragraph on a primary source. It covers textbook chapter 16, pages 482–517, and the four primary sources we read in class.

Read the timeline first, then the key terms. The practice questions are in section 7; the answers will appear here on Wednesday, after review. Questions about the guide go to me by email or at lunch in room 118.

Findings

  1. 1How to use this guideObservation, medium importance
  2. 2Timeline, 1865–1877Evidence, high importance
  3. 3Key termsObservation, high importance
  4. 4Presidential and Congressional ReconstructionInsight, medium importance
  5. 5What the three amendments promisedInsight, high importance
  6. 6Primary sources we readEvidence, medium importance
  7. 7Practice questionsQuestion, medium importance

Set with know.

The guide as the class sees it: the overview, then seven sections with their types. The answers and the question bank stay out until the teacher includes them.

QuizzesUnit 5 study guideQuestion 3 of 8

Which amendment made everyone born in the United States a citizen and promised the equal protection of the laws?

  1. aThe Thirteenth
  2. bThe Fourteenth
  3. cThe Fifteenth
  4. dThe Nineteenth

The answer is (b). The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) defined citizenship and promised equal protection; the Fifteenth (1870) barred denying the vote on account of race. See Unit 5 study guide, 5.

Answering from the guide alone, the teacher picked the Fifteenth: section 5 listed the amendments without saying which did what. The section gets a table, and the question goes into the draft bank.

Prompts to try

  1. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, create a document called “Unit 5 study guide — Reconstruction, 1865–1877” on my US History shelf from the unit plan and lesson notes I have attached. Put the test details in the overview, then one finding per section: How to use this guide, Timeline (as a two-column table), Key terms, one finding per big concept, Primary sources we read (with the archive page as a source link), Practice questions, and Answers. Summarise in plain words with textbook page numbers, and do not quote the textbook.

  2. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, read “Unit 5 study guide — Reconstruction, 1865–1877” on my US History shelf as a student who missed the whole unit. List every key term used before it is defined, every date in the concept sections that is missing from the timeline, and every practice question the guide does not give enough to answer. File the list as a new finding called “Gaps to fix” and do not change the guide.

  3. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, write fifteen multiple-choice questions on “Unit 5 study guide — Reconstruction, 1865–1877” into a new finding in that document called “Question bank draft”. For each, give four options, the answer, and the number of the section it comes from. Use only what the guide says, avoid “all of the above”, and keep every question to one idea.

Variations

  • For a whole course rather than a unit, keep the weeks in a syllabus and course book and link each week to its unit guide.
  • Teaching two levels of the same course? Ask your assistant to make a second document from the first, pitched for the other level, and share each with its own class.
  • Before a cumulative final, ask your assistant for a review document drawing on every unit guide on the shelf, with a link back to each section it summarises.
  • Keep a separate document of primary-source excerpts for document-based questions: a finding per source, with the archive link and a headnote in your words.

Where it falls short

  • Students cannot take quizzes in know.sh, and quizzes cannot be shared. The class’s quizzes and grades belong in your school’s own tools.
  • Students read; they cannot ask questions or leave notes on the link. Questions come to you in class or by email.
  • There is no export and no printed handout. Students without a device read the link on a library computer, or you copy the text into a handout yourself.
  • The read count is a single total. It cannot tell you which students opened the guide, which is as it should be.
  • Connecting an assistant means signing in once with your know.sh account, following the support page. Smaller local models call tools less reliably, so check what they file; Revisions shows every change.

A note on student privacy and test material

Indexed under

Unit study guidesPractice questionsQuestion banksKey termsTimelinesPrimary sourcesStudent privacy

See also