This chapter examines the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) as an innovative teaching tool in literacy education, focusing on its potential to scaffold students’ development of academic discourse. The pedagogy was developed in response to an analysis of academic papers from three cohorts in a master’s-level literacy program, which revealed that students struggled to translate informal insights into formal academic discourse. A series of GenAI-enhanced assignments moving across different modes were designed to help students deepen their thinking and articulate their learning via formal academic discourse. The findings suggest that iterative GenAI use not only supports academic discourse articulation but also deepens conceptual understanding and organizational skills. The study highlights GenAI’s scholarly significance in enhancing communicative competence and academic writing within literacy education. This approach demonstrates how GenAI can be leveraged more broadly to address specific challenges in higher education, particularly in developing students’ ability to express complex ideas in academic contexts.