Debating

Spent the evening searching for information about debating. Never having been a debater myself means I have a limited repertoire of ideas. While I have taught units involving debating before they have been for older students. So, where have I ended up? Well I found some great debating ideas at Education World I especially like the idea of the Four Corners Debate Strategy as an introductory task.

Great lesson ideas can also be found on this Education World page. I am fairly certain I will use the strategy involving each student being given 3 cards labelled comment or question. When a student wishes to make a point as part of the discussion, he or she raises one of the cards; after making a comment or asking a question pertinent to the discussion, the student turns in the card. This strategy encourages participants to think before jumping in; those who are usually frequent participants in classroom discussions must weigh whether the point they wish to make is valuable enough to turn in a card. When a student has used all the cards, he or she cannot participate again in the discussion until all students have used all their cards.

Considering the importance of digital technology in our student's lives I have been trying to find examples of debating podcasts or videos. Therein lies my dilemma. How to a) Find a video on debating that b) makes debating look interesting for the average 12 year old. Here are a few examples of what is out there.







While there are a few videos available on the Internet so far nothing has really grabbed me as a fabulous resource, so the search continues.

I did find a great resource with templates to get students organising their thoughts and ideas into a speech format however. Yet again it can be found at Education World.