High School Junior Varsity Curriculum Guide

Moving Up to Junior Varsity

The Junior Varsity division is for debaters who have gotten comfortable with the basics of policy debate and are learning the finer details of strategic argumentation. You may end up in this division because you have a season of debate experience under your belt or because you learned quickly in novice and want more of a challenge.

Skills you should have developed before advancing to Junior Varsity

Whether you are considering moving up or are starting in JV, there are certain things you should be consistently doing by this point:

• During rounds, you use all of your speech time, flow during each speech, and ask relevant questions during CX.

• You bring your packet to every tournament, and you have highlighted and organized it in a way that makes sense to you.

• You know the speech order of the debate.

• You know the three parts of an argument (ARE).

• You know the different ways that you can respond to an opponent’s argument (DR. MO).

• You know how to conduct impact comparison (MR. T).

• You know the four parts of public speaking (2PAC).

• You know the four parts of an affirmative case/1AC.

• You know the four parts of a negative disadvantage.

Skills you’ll develop in Junior Varsity

• You’ll learn how to strategically pick the best arguments to extend in your rebuttals.

• You’ll learn how to do line-by-line refutation to answer individual arguments in an organized fashion.

• You’ll learn how to give overviews for your major arguments.

• You’ll learn how to judge the quality of a piece of evidence and compare/contrast evidence.

• You’ll learn about different types of judges and ways to adapt your speeches for them.

• You’ll learn how to make turn arguments to make the opponent’s arguments into reasons to vote for you.

• You’ll learn new flowing skills to keep debates with multiple major arguments organized.

Get started with the Junior Varsity Curriculum Guide!