Classchat

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This skill is was created with the goal in mind of aiding teachers of young students in teaching listening skills through the use of the "turn and talk" method, which is described as follows. The teacher begins by pairing each student up. Each child then turns to their partner, and then the teacher provides each student with a question. Each student then takes a turn answering the question. This method is implemented by providing the students with a random question, a timer so each student knows when their time to talk is done, and also introduces a series of verbal cues that a teacher would introduce to her students prior to use that help to keep children on task.

Using the skill is fairly simple. To start the skill, say something to the effect of "Alexa, ask Classchat to give us a question", and Alexa will begin by saying, "Okay everyone, 1, 2, 3, knee to knee!" This is one of the aforementioned verbal cues, and is the "turn" part of "turn and talk". At this point, each child would be asked to face their partner. Alexa will then ask a random question from the question database provided. After Alexa asks the question, an internal timer will begin, and this is where a teacher would direct her students to begin to answer the question to one another. The default time is set to 3 minutes, and Alexa will announce when time is halfway finished so the other partner can begin to speak. Once time is up, Alexa will say "3, 2, 1, talking is done!", which is another verbal cue meant to return the attention to the teacher. It will then ask the kids to give a "thumbs up" if they demonstrated a key communication skill, such as making good eye contact.

You can ask Alexa to provide a question that is more focused on a specific topic by saying something like "ask Classchat to give us a question about respect". The different topics you can currently choose from are: reading, our strengths, each other, respect, and school.

You can also adjust the time allotted for the question by saying something like "ask Classchat for question for 2 minutes". A number of different phrasings have been included in the intent schema in order to provide for many different teaching scenarios.