School: Mudgeeraba State Special School

Sector: Government

Location: Mudgeeraba, Queensland, Australia

Teacher: Lachlan Munn

Role: Classroom Teacher and Student Engagement Coordinator

Usage period: October 2025 – March 2026 (6 months)

‍

The situation

Lachlan Munn teaches students who need differentiated instruction for every lesson, not as an ideal, but as a baseline requirement. At a state special school, there is no such thing as a standard resource. Every lesson needs UDL (Universal Design for Learning) scaffolding, AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) support, Queensland curriculum alignment, and enough engagement to hold the attention of learners who have often been let down by one-size-fits-all teaching before.

The planning load that comes with that is not minor. It’s the kind that eats Sunday afternoons and Tuesday evenings simultaneously.

What Lachlan wanted wasn’t less work. He wanted more time for the work that only he can do: being present with his students, reading the room, making the call in the moment that no lesson plan can script.

‍

What Lachlan actually did

Over six months, Lachlan built 60 AI-generated resources across his full teaching workflow. Not a one-off experiment. A sustained, consistent practice averaging 10 outputs per month, with no drop-off from October through to March.

His most-used tool was Lesson Plan, at 16 uses, saving nearly two hours per lesson on average. But what tells the fuller story is his second-most-used tool: Gamify, at 12 uses. Lachlan wasn’t just trying to get through the planning. He was committed to making every lesson worth showing up for.

Pit Crew Maths: Fast Lane Challenge (February 2026)

A complete gamified unit turning counting and number comparison into a racing adventure, complete with 30-plus achievement badges, differentiated station rotations, and Queensland curriculum alignment, all safety-framed for a special school context. That single output saved 124 minutes of planning time. It also gave his students a reason to want to count.

Harmony Day Mini PBL (March 2026)

A 20-minute outdoor PBL experience celebrating inclusion and cultural diversity, built on the Buck Institute framework, with eight differentiated tuff tray activities, UDL scaffolds, and AAC and Auslan integration woven through. Two hours of planning, done. A lesson worth remembering, ready to run within 20 minutes.

Across his 60 outputs, the same patterns repeat: inclusive design as standard, Queensland compliance embedded, every resource built to be used tomorrow, not filed and forgotten.

‍

The outcomes

What changed and how?

Lachlan explored 15 different tools across seven categories. That’s not a teacher who tried one feature and declared victory. That’s a teacher who found a platform that works for the full shape of his job.

‍

• 67 hours reclaimed - Across 6 months of active use, October 2025 to March 2026‍
• 60 differentiated resources created - Lesson plans, gamified units, reworded materials, student reports, emails‍
• Sustained adoption - Consistent 9 to 19 outputs per month. No novelty spike and drop-off‍
• Differentiation at scale - Every output includes UDL, AAC support, and learner-level scaffolding as standard

‍

What Lachlan used

Learner-level differentiation

Every resource Lachlan generated was built for the actual learners in his class, from tactile sentence builders for AAC users to extended mathematics units with errorless learning design.

Curriculum-aligned lesson and unit planning

Materials mapped to the Queensland curriculum, with PBL frameworks, 5E inquiry structures, and UDL CAST principles embedded, not bolted on after the fact.

Gamification for engagement

Lachlan used Teacher’s Buddy’s Gamify tool 12 times, more than any other single capability. For special education students, engagement is not a nice-to-have. It’s the precondition for learning.

‍

FOR SCHOOL LEADERS

What this story means at a school level

Lachlan’s pattern matters institutionally. Consistent adoption over six months, across a full range of planning and communication tasks, at a school where every learner has high and differentiated needs, is exactly what sustainable AI integration looks like. It’s not a pilot that faded. It’s a changed workflow with confidence.

The platform configured to Lachlan’s Queensland context, his curriculum, and his students meant that he wasn’t adapting a generic tool to his classroom. He was working with one already shaped around it.

‍

Evaluate the effectiveness of Teacher’s Buddy at your school through our pilot program. You can enrol up to 50 teachers in structured support to implement Teacher’s Buddy for 5 weeks. This includes personalised onboarding, coaching opportunities, clear measures of success and an impact brief at the end.

‍

If Lachlan’s classroom sounds like yours

Teaching at a special school is not like teaching anywhere else. Every lesson has to work harder. Teacher’s Buddy is built for exactly that complexity: AI built exclusively for teachers, creating materials differentiated for every learner in your class, from your highest flyers to those who need more scaffolding.

‍

Try one lesson. See what 67 hours looks like for you.

‍