This summer I am again teaching an enrichment program at Illinois Central College like I did last year. I am looking forward to continuing teaching throughout the summer. I also plan on continuing to write my thesis and catching up on some reading that I was not able to get to during the school year. The enrichment classes I teach are Strategy Survival, CSI: Dallas (in which we study the Kennedy assassination) and Great Debates. This year I am planning on making some adjustments to my debate class. Last year we carried out research and had five relatively formal debates about topics students voted on over the two week period. This year, I am going to plan various types of debates that will seek to increase student engagement. Debates are wonderfully productive because they can help students develop research skills, critical thinking skills as they analyze arguments, and also speaking and listening skills. I plan debates within my own social studies classroom quite often.
It is important to remember when planning and moderating a debate is that all students need to be involved. This can be quite tricky because during a well managed debate only one persons should be speaking at a time and half of an entire class of students would make a rather large debate team. One technique I use to increase participation is to have students researching various debate questions related to the topic we are studying. When a team is acting as the audience for a debate they have not researched they are asked to develop and ask questions of the debaters. Additionally, I am very specific about the roles each person plays on the debate teams themselves. There is always a lead speaker who presents the initial argument, a person responsible for the rebuttals, a lead researcher for the argument, and a counter argument specialist. The job of the counter argument specialist is to predict potential point the other side will raise and think about counterarguments to make when and if these arguments arise. At some point I encourage students to take on each of these roles throughout the school year.
I also help students develop debate skills by planning informal debate activities. One activity that allows students to practice their public speaking skills is the one-minute monologue. Students come to the front of the room and improvise a one minute speech about an assigned topic. While students are speaking this allows we to monitor and remind students in the audience about listening expectations during debates. Next, line debates include all students and allow students to argue multiple perspectives with a variety of partners. Students line up in two lines facing each other. One line is assigned the affirmative and one side the negative. I usually allow one minute back and forth for four minutes. Since arguments were assigned, at the conclusion of this activity we then vote on our perspectives on the topic. It is important to remind students when they complete this activity that they need to use a normal speaking voice as many people will be talking in the classroom at once and others need to be able to hear. Also, since as a teacher I am often not able to monitor each debate that his happening simultaneously, I remind students to be supportive of one another and that proper debate etiquette demands respect for ones opponent.
To get students moving and motivated I often use four corner debates as well, which require students to move around the room depending on their perspective. Not only does this force students to all get involved, it also allows students to get a feel for how popular various perspectives are. Finally balloon debates, which are set up somewhat like a fishbowl, allow students to argue for multiple perspectives. For instance, my students sometimes complete balloon debates about the most important news story they learned about at the end of the week. Each student with a different perspective argues their point. The audience then votes to decide which is the least important and that person is "parachutes out of the balloon" and joins the audience. The debate then continues until there are only two people left in the balloon and the results are decided. Since this activity has the potential to get rather competitive, again it is important to explain to students they must be respectful. Rounds of applause are appropriate for people exiting the balloon and sometimes I remind sensitive students that they should not take it personally if their topic is voted out because it is not personal. Assigning students to topics or asking students to argue against their own perspective on occasion can reduce this concern.
Overall debates are fun and effective ways to learn a great deal of content. They promote active learning and there are many versatile ways to manage them within the classroom. I am definitely looking forward to taking my classes this summer and implementing these debate ideas into my Great Debates enrichment class.
