Starting Your Team

First Debates

Introduction

Once students are more comfortable speaking in front of each other, it’s good to help get them comfortable with disagreeing with one another. Students will have to take oppositional stances in debate rounds, so they’ll need to learn how to disagree politely.

Brief activities, which we call SPAR debates (short for SPontaneous ARgumentation) are a good way to foster this kind of respectful environment on your team. You’ll find lesson plans for a few SPAR debate activities within this section. These activities can be a good way for students to develop their persuasion skills, as these activities give them an audience to persuade. Having the classroom vote on a winner and a loser after each will help students identify successful strategies while easing them into the more competitive elements of debate.

SPAR debates also benefit students who are not participating in them. Even if you have a large team, having two or four students compete in a SPAR debate in front of the class can be useful, as students who are not debating can work on their note-taking and recall skills.

Learning Objectives

In this section, students should:

  • Learn how to disagree politely with one another.

  • Become familiar with persuading an audience.

  • Work on accepting wins and losses with grace.

  • Develop their listening and note-taking skills.

Points of Improvement

First debates can be hard, especially as students lack some of the structural techniques they’ll be exposed to later in the curriculum. While you should still look out for the kinds of arguments students are making (for example, are they appealing to emotion, or are they using reason and logic? The latter tends to be more persuasive in policy debates), this section focuses more on building self-awareness in a safe–and fun–environment.

  • If a student is reluctant to participate in a SPAR debate, see if you can get them to debate about a topic that they’re passionate about. This tactic works just as well for first speeches as it does for first debates, but you’ll just need to make sure that another debater is willing to take the opposite stance.

  • If a student is dominating each debate, to the point where others are afraid to go up against them, find a way to level the playing field. You could have the student take a stance that they disagree with, for example, and that may make it easier for other debaters to participate with them.

  • If a student struggles to take notes, to the point where they stop trying to flow, encourage them to get down something about main points or an outline of the speech. Encourage students to put together what they all caught to create a full picture of a speech to mitigate frustration. Flowing on the board can also help keep students stay engaged even if they have a hard time keeping up.

Signs of Mastery

Here are some positive signs that students’ first few SPAR debates have been going well:

  • Students are comfortable disagreeing with each other and can do so politely.

  • Students can handle disagreement in front of others.

  • Students are changing their tactics to be more persuasive.

  • Students are engaged during SPAR debates and are healthily invested in winning.

  • Students can handle wins and losses as determined by their peers.

  • Students are paying attention and are taking notes during each speech in a SPAR debate.

Lesson Plans