AI Blocks › Teach and train people
Class discussion format picker
Give it your topic and group. Get the discussion format that fits, with steps to run it.
Class discussion format picker is a free AI skill for the job "Teach and train people". Give the instructions to an AI assistant that supports the required files and tools, then review its output.
Free · No account · CC BY SA 4.0 licence · Made by Gareth Manning · Level: beginner
Made by Gareth Manning. See the original on GitHub; we copied it as it is, with its licence.
What it does
The right kind of class discussion for your goal, with steps to run it. A debate, a Socratic seminar and a think-pair-share all do different jobs. You give your topic, purpose and group, and you get the best match. The skill asks what the talk should achieve: explore ideas, argue a view, reach agreement or analyse a text. It weighs your students' age and how used to structured talk they are. Then it picks a format and writes a facilitation guide: how to set the room, a starter question, sentence frames for students, what you say when talk stalls, and how to keep quiet voices in. The advice draws on research on productive classroom talk.
You give it
- What the discussion should achieve
- The topic or driving question
- Age and experience of your students
- Time available (optional)
You get
- A recommended discussion format
- Steps to run it
- Sentence starters for students
- Moves for when talk stalls
- Ways to include quiet students
Use it when
- You want a discussion that goes deeper than the same few students talking.
- You are planning a Socratic seminar for the first time.
- Your class needs to argue both sides of an issue fairly.
- Students are young and need sentence starters to join in.
How to use it
- Add it to your AI once: download it and add the folder to Claude, ChatGPT or Codex as a skill.
- Ask for the job in your own words. Your AI opens the skill when it fits.