A Chicago-based after-school program is using Suno, an AI music composition tool, to teach elementary students creative skills while keeping them away from screens. Students brainstorm song ideas on paper and pencil, then instructors input their handwritten notes into Suno to generate music. The approach reflects a growing but largely unresearched sector of education focused on teaching young children foundational AI skills.

Overture Games, founded by two Northwestern University music graduates, has expanded this paper-first model across 36 schools and youth centers in Illinois, plus another 18 in Massachusetts. The startup's cofounders, Aspen Buckingham and Steven Jiang, pivoted from teaching music composition online to addressing what they saw as schools' fear of introducing AI to students without clear guidance.

Why Are Schools Hesitant About Teaching AI to Young Children?

A 2025 report from the RAND Corporation found that more than 60% of middle and high school teachers in core subjects like English, math, and science are using AI at school. However, elementary school teachers lag significantly behind, with only 42% ever introducing AI in the classroom. This gap reflects broader uncertainty about how to teach AI responsibly to younger students.

Steven Jiang explained the school's perspective: "You could feel this sense of huge fear and anti-innovation approach coming from the school, not because they don't think it's a great technology, but because they don't know how to introduce it to the students". The paper-and-pencil approach appeals to parents and educators concerned about screen time and safety, since students never directly interact with AI tools themselves.

Steven Jiang

What Skills Should Kids Actually Learn About AI?

Experts disagree on whether teaching children to write prompts for AI is the most valuable skill. Victor Lee, an education professor at Stanford University who helps high school teachers incorporate AI into lesson plans, questioned Overture's emphasis on prompting. "The question we have to ask is: Is prompting the most important skill to learn? I would say a lot of AI literacy experts say no," Lee noted.

Instead, Lee believes elementary schools should teach AI only "if there was a really valid and productive instructional purpose tied to important learning goals." He suggested that conversations about AI's limitations and common mistakes are more valuable than hands-on tool use for young students.

Lee

How Does Overture's Classroom Model Work?

In Overture's after-school program at the Rebecca K. Crown Chicago Youth Center in South Shore, students engage in structured creative activities that combine traditional brainstorming with AI generation. Here's how the process unfolds:

• Brainstorming Phase: Students gather in groups with pencil and paper to discuss what kind of song or creative project they want to make, pitching ideas and debating options before writing anything down.
• Prompt Writing: Students fill in blank worksheets describing their vision, including details about lyrics, instruments, mood, and theme, all captured in handwriting.
• AI Generation: The instructor collects the worksheets, types the students' notes into Suno or other AI tools like Google Gemini or Runway AI, and generates multiple versions for students to review.
• Iteration and Selection: Students listen to the AI-generated outputs and choose the version that best matches their original vision, learning to refine their ideas through feedback.

Eight-year-old Matthew Uriosdegui participated in this process to create a song celebrating the last day of the program. His group decided on a "groovy" piano tune about an island party with balloons and cake. After hearing Suno's output, Matthew said, "Oh, I like this one," snapping along to the track.

Matthew

What Are Students Actually Learning Beyond Prompting?

Overture also teaches students to identify AI's weaknesses and limitations through games like "Real or AI," where students examine images and guess whether they were photographed or generated. Matthew learned that AI struggles to create realistic body parts, often adds excessive lighting, and produces poor results when prompts contain misspellings. He reported that his spelling improved by "25% better" after realizing how AI responds to typos.

Over the course of a 10-week program, students work in groups to draw characters by hand, write prompts describing them, and tweak their descriptions to get closer to their vision. By the end, they've created an entire imaginary world or interactive game, learning collaboration and communication skills alongside technical literacy.

Do Hands-On Approaches Help Kids Retain Information?

Elizabeth Radday of EdAdvance, a nonprofit supporting public schools in Connecticut, argued that hands-on creative work with AI tools helps students retain information better than passive learning. "There's a big difference between kids that are doing things to create a final project, versus clicking through something and just watching videos, or learning about AI through watching someone else do it," Radday said.

Radday sees promise in Overture's model because it democratizes creative skills. "If you love gaming and want to create your own games as a fifth grader, that used to be a really high-level skill that was not accessible. But now, AI tools can help a second grader do that. That's where we really think about AI extending and accelerating what kids can do, not just replacing critical thinking," she explained.

However, experts note a critical gap: just because students know how to use an AI tool for a project doesn't mean they truly understand what artificial intelligence is or how it works. This distinction matters as schools scale AI education without clear research on best practices for young learners.