Fundamentals
Still Matter
Your students are using AI. You should be able to see how. A writing platform that makes the process visible — every draft, every question, every breakthrough.
Why "Killing Dinosaurs"?
When I became an English major, there was a required course — English 3000. The professor, a very posh Brit, described the five-paragraph essay as a dinosaur: little head, big body, drawn-out tail. He made one thing clear: turn in anything that even resembled that format and you'd automatically fail. We were there to learn to read, think, and write — not churn out pablum.
I was 30, returning to college. That rule felt freeing — it was a constraint I'd never abided by anyway. But for students who had written nothing but five-paragraph essays since sixth grade — and were still being assigned them in college — it was nothing short of disruptive.
This is why we're building Killing Dinosaurs — because students should learn how to think, not fill in blanks, even if the blanks are five paragraphs.
What's a "Dinosaur"?
The five-paragraph essay. Taught since the 1950s. Still graded today. Look familiar?
1. The Tiny Head
Introduction with thesis.
Tell them what you'll tell them.
2–4. The Big Body
Three body paragraphs.
"Firstly…" "Secondly…" "Lastly…"
5. The Long Tail
Conclusion.
Tell them what you just told them.
Tiny head. Big body. Long tail. It's a dinosaur.
And it's been fossilized in classrooms for seventy years. Time to kill it.
The Five-Paragraph Essay
Is AI Catnip
The five-paragraph essay is a formulaic and predictable template, which AI can use to generate a polished product in seconds.
What AI can't do is show the messy process of thinking, revising, and discovering ideas.
That's what we should be looking at.
Process Over Product
Show Your Work
See exactly where students used AI — and where they didn't. Every draft, every conversation, every breakthrough is visible. No more guessing what's theirs.
AI That Researches, Not Writes
Your students get a research partner that asks better questions — not one that hands them answers. You set the guardrails. The AI stays inside them.
Reward Progress
Grade the journey, not just the destination. See how a student's thinking evolved from first draft to final — and give credit for the growth that matters.
The Problem Is Real
"It's not even an inability to critically think. It's an inability to read sentences."
— Jessica Hooten Wilson, Pepperdine University (Fortune)
"LLMs worsened existing problems rather than created new ones."
In a study of 85 English majors, only 4 demonstrated full comprehension of a single Dickens passage — even with dictionaries and phones in hand. (Source)
Grammarly now claims its AI agent can predict which papers will receive an A. If an AI can predict your rubric, the rubric is the problem.
For teachers who are tired of the BS
Ready to Kill
Some Dinosaurs?
You didn't sign up to compete with AI — but here we are. Let's figure this out together.