Insights

A close read of the second open-source Claude for Teachers skill — how k12-lesson-differentiation turns one lesson into below-, at-, and above-level versions while keeping the core content identical, and the rubrics that keep it honest.

A close read of the k12-lesson-planning skill Anthropic open-sourced with Claude for Teachers — how it draws on standards-mapped curricula and learning progressions to draft a plan plus student-facing materials.

The two K-12 teaching skills ship free inside Claude for Teachers — but they're also open-sourced. Here's the exact git clone, plugin marketplace add, and plugin install sequence to run them in Claude Code today.

Anthropic's Claude for Teachers gives verified US K-12 educators free premium Claude, a library of teaching skills, standards for all 50 states, and Claude Code plus Cowork. Here's what's inside.

The K-12 teaching skills ship as a Claude Code plugin — bundling both skills plus teacher-focused MCP servers behind marketplace.json, plugin.json, and .mcp.json. It's a reusable packaging pattern worth copying.

Claude for Teachers ships every educator a connector to the Learning Commons Knowledge Graph — academic standards across all 50 states, plus the competencies and progressions beneath them. Here's why that changes what 'standards-aligned' means.

A standard is a destination, not a route. Claude for Teachers reaches past the standard to the smaller competencies it's built from and the order students learn them — and that progression map is what makes real scaffolding possible.

MagicSchool's Claude for Teachers connector makes instructional content classroom-ready — the finishing step that turns a solid draft into something you can actually put in front of students tomorrow.

Mastery-based learning is a proven practice that's brutal to run at scale — it needs constant reassessment, a clear map of what comes next, and materials for wherever each student actually is. Here's how progressions, differentiation, and assessment loops make it feasible with Claude for Teachers.

Differentiation is the highest-value, most time-expensive thing a teacher does — which is why it's usually the first thing to get cut. Here's why Claude for Teachers targets it, and how it becomes a minutes-long job.

Claude for Teachers brings OpenSciEd into the planning loop, so science lessons are grounded in a vetted curriculum instead of generated from scratch. Here's what teaching from trusted materials buys you that raw generation can't.

The Claude for Teachers lesson-planning workflow, step by step: ask for a lesson, let Claude draw on curricula mapped to your state's standards and the progressions beneath them, and get back a plan plus student-facing materials you revise.