Debating Methods
Document | General Resource
Practical Tips for Organising Debating
1. Finding time for debating groups to meet
2. Tailoring debating sessions to different size groups
3. Teaching different stages/year levels at the same time
1. Finding Time
With busy school schedules and curriculum requirements we understand the difficulty you face running extracurricular activities, even if they are as well-linked to the curriculum as is debating!
Squeezing debating into an occasional lunchtime can be frustrating for you and your students (when you’ve forgotten the swimming carnival or excursion that means your group has to miss a week) and can cause a loss of momentum. Strategies like playing thinking games (our games resource offers some examples) can break the ice and help make students keen to give up more lunch times. Once momentum is established, interruptions usually have a less negative effect on development.
One way of saving time while trying to give students real debating practice is to do shortened preps at one meeting and the debates at the next. You can also use shortened speaking times (if necessary). There are far worse things than requiring kids to be concise and get straight on with dealing with the main threads of a debate, in fact, shortened speaking times are almost always preferable to make the most of time!
On the other hand, if you do have the luxury of some class time for extended sessions, you can practice full debates then, with all your teams preparing at once and then taking turns to debate.
One model we’ve seen involves the debaters in a class preparing at lunchtime and then debating in front of their whole class straight after lunch.
Another model we’ve also seen requires the debating group to work apart from normal classes. In this example, which runs once a week, lunchtime and the following periods until the end of the school day are set aside for the debating group. This solid time frame can include full debates.
Another not uncommon model is a once-a-week after-school debating group that runs for ninety minutes or two hours.
Every school has constraints and possibilities particular to its circumstances and routines, so being inventive in your own context is the key. Don’t forget that the occasional ‘breakfast club’ mornings or an ‘invite a friend’ afternoon tea, tend to work well!
Finally, the key to debating is to make the most of your resources—setting up peer mentoring sessions with older students or inviting the occasional guest to a debating class can add a huge amount of value.
2. Different size groups
Setting up a debating and critical thinking club is possible for groups of all shapes and sizes, whether you are a small school with very few students or a bigger school with many keen beans!
The traditional and familiar classroom strategies of differentiation, group work and activity-based learning should always be adhered to when teaching a club, regardless of the size. With that in mind, there are some useful strategies that we can share with you to make the process even easier.
Small groups of 2 to 6 students
Those of you in small (often rural) schools may only have a few students interested in learning critical thinking. First, we’d like to underline the thought that these activities can appeal to more kids than is often believed. With some encouragement and the use of some of the strategies we’ve outlined, not only can a group be successful, it can often be expanded.
Within a small group, students are able to receive consistent practice and support, and this can outweigh the limitations of having fewer opportunities for interaction and modelling that are made possible within a larger cohort.
Introducing research books where students are expected to keep their debating-relevant articles can be particularly effective for small groups. For example, one student could be looking into global politics and another could provide articles on new educational policy. These types of exercises are less effective in big groups, but the more condensed sense of responsibility students feel in a small group, where they know each other well and need to rely on each other, often means that research tasks are more fully ‘owned’ by each student. (In a larger group, where there may be two or three students responsible for a research area, students may be more inclined to leave it to the others!)
The lack of competition in small groups can also allow students to find a stable place in a team where they can devote themselves to mastering its complexities rather than feeling uncommitted because they’re unsure of the longevity of the role. While it’s always good for students to try different roles, the lack of competition means you can give them time to become confident in one role before asking them to be more flexible.
Overseeing and guiding a small group means you are spread less thinly than you would be if attending to the needs of many students. This allows you to notice and enable the finer points of each individual’s development. Being flexible and inventive is useful with any group, but it may be even more necessary with a small one—we’ve worked with a remote school which had a total of three students—so everyone had a role debating, and they borrowed one kid from another school to make up the full team!
Games and quizzes are always useful and may help meld a small group of different ages so they develop unity of purpose.
Groups of 7 to 12 students
This is the most common size for school debating groups. With these kinds of numbers it is easy to form two teams and have them engage in practise debates frequently, while leaving plenty of time for productive group discussion. The main thing to remember with groups of this size is to find ways to keep the students engaged when they aren’t actively speaking in practise debates. A few suggestions that are easy to implement are:
Use reply speakers
Reply speakers aren’t traditionally seen in ‘conflict debating’ (the style that we generally use in the southern hemisphere), but they are common in particular versions of British Parliamentary debating or Presidential style. We suggest including reply speeches at the end
of the debate (after the 3rd speakers have concluded their speeches) with the explicit role of providing an overall analysis of the case and providing a short speech (approximately a minute) that aims to lay out the reasons that they have won the debate. Think of this as a biased adjudication—they can be less formal than the other speeches, but definitely add some colour to a debate and provide a special extra role.
Give students a role as adjudicators
Learning to adjudicate requires patience, time, a keen mind and, most importantly, plenty of exposure to different debates and styles. If any students are going to ‘watch’ a debate, it is at least worthwhile having them track the key arguments and rebuttal (responses to arguments) in the debate as they listen, but better still, they should be encouraged to give a full adjudication of the debate at the end—including an oral presentation! If there are multiple students who are watching a debate, it is easy to set up a ‘panel’ system, where the adjudicators come to their own decision individually and the team that is in majority favour wins the debate (obviously this is better achieved with odd numbers of students on a panel!)
Roster students onto duties (timekeeper/chairperson)
We’ve found that students really don’t mind taking a break and ‘chairing’ or ‘timing’ a debate that their friends are involved in, particularly if they are all a part of the same squad or club. This is a great way to keep students listening (they still need to time the debate after all) as well as to practise formal presentation with the use of an introductory script. Better still, put the students to the task of coming up with interesting introductions and nicknames for their fellow debaters, you can even take it further by getting them to create a full dramatic contextual introduction:
On the affirmative team, we have Berta ‘The bulldozer’ Jones, who hails from the fierce town of Mollytippet! They are undefeated in 12 debates straight up to this point and will be looking to reduce the oppositions’ case to rubble.
It’s important students see that these rostered roles are part of the squad—the sooner they get used to a rotating schedule of some kind, the more consistent their learning will become.
Squads of 12 or more students
With 12 or more students wanting to be involved in debating, it can sometimes look like you’re about to embark on a rather daunting educational journey, but these classes are often more fun! Activities can sometimes be harder to facilitate (which is to be expected based on the size of the group), but many of the smaller-group activities we’ve already covered are adaptable for larger groups, particularly considering your students can be formed into multiple teams.
Having a number of teams (particularly if it’s an even number!) allows practice debates to occur regularly within your school, with more students getting real-time speaking or advising.
Some teachers will have representative and ‘understudy’ teams where the Year 8, 10 and 12 students form the team(s) who debate in competition, and the Year 7, 9 and 11 practice and observe while waiting their turn in the next year. This allows engagement, with a sense of succession that motivates the younger students. If older students have ways established for them to act as mentors, this can reinforce the unity within larger groups.
3. Different Stages
It is certainly readily possible to teach different stages in one class, though in an ideal world, we would advise against it if you have the choice.
Most of the competitions that you’ll enter have year or stage divisions, with specific topic areas for each round, so separating your students into groups that correspond with these rounds benefits both their learning with their peers, as well as making case material easier to teach. With that said, if you are limited by time or the number of students available, we’ve no- ticed three developmental stages of debating that can be used as a guide for dividing students for the most effective teaching. These separations avoid difficulties where students aren’t on the same page developmental- ly or where the content of debate issues is too alien or inappropriate for them.
Because most primary schools are separate from high schools, a Year 5 and 6 group is an obvious combination (and synchronises with some competitions, for instance). It usually works well together without anyone being overly taxed or held back. Including Year 4 students in late term 3 or term 4, when they are developmentally prepared and older students have skills for them to observe, is an effective way to stage their introduction to the activity. If you include them too early you’ll find that the understandable gaps between year 4 and 6 students in literacy and writing skill will slow the entire group down.
In high school, if you’re unable to separate your debaters into Year 7/8, 9/10 and 11/12 groups, then having a Year 7 to 9 group and a Year 10 to 12 group is the best separation developmentally. It is within the reach of such a combination to master the same debating concepts and argumentation structures.
Although including students at different stages of development is more of a challenge to manage, it isn’t an uncommon situation, particularly in small schools where one teacher runs the whole debating program. If you have to include a wide range of ages and development stages in your group, there are two further situations to consider:
Where all the students involved are starting to learn how to debate, a relatively uniform approach is possible. Introducing the methodology everyone needs to learn, step by step, can act as a leveller. At the same time, older students may have more knowledge of current affairs and have more mature analytical skills that you can encourage as assets for the whole group.
Where some students in a group have more debating experience than others, you can make use of them as models, or even mentors, for newcomers. You will need to juggle the balance between keeping the more knowledgeable students motivated and developing while introducing beginners to the basics. This may be less of an issue than it seems because experienced debaters need to have the fundamental structures essential to creating effective arguments constantly reinforced. At the same time, exposing beginners to ideas that extend their thinking allows able students to test more advanced skills. You can always encourage those who aren’t ready to take on too much to double down on basic skills.
It should go without saying, but if you are merging a variety of ages together, the key is collaboration over competition. Holding a series of friendly debates between established teams or with students from adjacent year groups is great—it creates positive rivalry and a sense of continuity with training sessions. But, sending your Year 7’s against your Year 11 team, for instance, can quickly erode confidence and be disheartening. If your group is small and you really need to practice these year groups against each other, try mixing the teams, adding yourself in as one of the speakers, or even changing some of the rules around prep to give the junior students more time.