Dartmouth Conference

This worksheet is designed for students in Grades 5-7 to build reading comprehension, historical analysis, and critical thinking through an informational text about the 1956 Dartmouth Conference. Students read about the purpose, participants, and long-term significance of this landmark event, then answer multiple-choice questions that help them understand how the conference led to the formal recognition of artificial intelligence as a scientific field.

Learning Goals

• Informational Text Comprehension (Grades 5-7) – Understand key ideas and details about a major historical event in computing.
• Foundations of Artificial Intelligence – Learn how and why the Dartmouth Conference is considered the birth of AI.
• Historical Inquiry & Analysis – Examine how people, ideas, and events influenced technological development.
• Cause & Effect Reasoning – Analyze how the conference proposal led to long-term changes in science and technology.

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource – Designed by educators to align with middle-grade ELA, science, and social studies standards.
• Multiple-Choice Format – Supports focused comprehension checks and assessment-ready practice.
• Content-Specific Vocabulary – Builds understanding of key terms related to computing history and AI.
• Flexible Use – Ideal for STEM integration, history of technology units, guided reading, or homework.

This printable worksheet helps students connect a key historical moment to the evolution of modern artificial intelligence. By analyzing the Dartmouth Conference and its impact, learners strengthen comprehension, inference, and historical reasoning skills while building essential background knowledge in computer science. Suitable for classroom or homeschool use, this no-prep activity supports interdisciplinary learning and helps students understand how ideas from the past shape today’s technology.

This worksheet is part of our History of AI collection.