Designing AI-Resistant Writing Tasks in ELA

As AI tools like ChatGPT become increasingly common in schools, English teachers are facing a new challenge: how to design writing tasks that encourage authentic student thinking rather than polished AI output. While banning AI outright isn’t realistic—or necessarily desirable—ELA teachers can get ahead of the problem by crafting “AI-resistant” tasks. These are assessments that emphasize personal voice, lived experience, process, and creativity, making it much harder (and far less useful) for students to outsource their work to machines.

In this post, we’ll explore effective strategies for designing AI-resistant writing tasks in high school English, with practical examples you can try right away.

1. Make It Personal and Local

AI is great at producing generic essays, but it struggles to write about specific personal experiences or your local context. Build assignments around students’ own lives, communities, or school culture.

Example: Instead of asking students to write a persuasive essay on a global issue like climate change, ask them to craft an op-ed about a challenge in their local school or town—drawing on interviews with peers or staff.

This strategy ensures that students must generate and integrate unique content that AI cannot access, while also strengthening their voice and ownership of their writing.

2. Require Process Documentation

AI tools can produce final drafts quickly, but they can’t replicate the iterative thinking process of a developing writer. By embedding steps like brainstorming, outlines, annotated research, peer feedback, and reflections, you make it harder to submit one-off AI work.

Example: When running a creative writing unit, have students submit:

• A concept pitch

• A detailed plot outline

• A draft with tracked changes and peer comments

• A writer’s statement explaining their choices

The High School Creative Writing Unit: Secondary Moral Dilemma Narrative is a great resource for this. It guides students through planning and revising narratives, naturally building in those checkpoints that prove authorship.

3. Incorporate In-Class Writing Moments

In-class writing sessions are a simple but powerful way to ensure authenticity. They also lower stress for students, since they don’t have to produce perfect drafts at home.

Example: If students are writing literary analysis essays, have them complete their introduction and one body paragraph during class time, then expand or polish at home. This gives you a reliable baseline sample of their writing style for comparison.

You can even follow up with brief oral conferences where students talk through their argument and evidence—an approach that works well with literature units like the The Book Thief Novel Study Unit, where explaining thematic analysis helps confirm authentic understanding.

4. Emphasize Creative and Multimodal Formats

AI text generators are best at formal prose. They struggle with truly creative or multimedia tasks that require human judgment, aesthetic decisions, and emotional nuance.

Example: After reading “The Pedestrian,” instead of a standard essay, ask students to:

• Write a diary entry from the protagonist’s perspective

• Create a storyboard for a modern film adaptation

• Record a podcast discussing the story’s themes

These kinds of tasks, especially when paired with resources like the The Pedestrian Short Story Unit, demand originality and can’t simply be copied from an AI tool.

5. Require Real-World Sources and Citations

AI tools often fabricate information or give vague generalities. By requiring students to integrate quotes, interviews, or statistics from specific real-world sources, you make it much harder to rely solely on AI.

Example: Assign a literary comparison essay that includes at least two scholarly articles or interviews with authors, which students must summarize, evaluate, and cite in MLA format.

This not only curbs AI misuse but also builds research and source evaluation skills—critical for college and career readiness.

6. Design High-Level Thinking Questions

AI does fine summarizing texts, but it struggles with nuanced analysis, synthesis, and evaluation—especially when the question is framed in an unusual or layered way.

Example: Rather than asking “What is a theme in All Summer in a Day?”, ask:“How does Bradbury use the children’s group behavior to explore conformity and isolation, and what connections can you make to group dynamics in your own school setting?”

This kind of higher-order question pushes students to combine textual analysis with personal reflection, resulting in work that AI can’t easily fake.

7. Teach Ethical Use and Self-Reflection

Finally, don’t ignore AI entirely—teach students how to use it responsibly and reflectively. If they do use AI as a brainstorming partner, require them to submit the prompts they used, the AI output, and a reflection on how they revised and improved it.

This approach builds digital literacy and emphasizes that AI is a tool to support thinking, not replace it.

Building a Culture of Authentic Thinking

AI isn’t the end of authentic writing—it’s an opportunity to rethink assessment. By emphasizing personal voice, creative thinking, documented process, and critical engagement, you can create writing tasks that are both AI-resistant and deeply enriching for your students.

To get started, explore the ready-to-teach units at Tea for Teacher. Combining AI-resistant strategies with high-quality resources like the creative writing and literature study units gives you the best of both worlds: rigorous, engaging tasks that truly reflect student thinking.