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Middle School Novice Curriculum Guide
Reading the Packet
So you know that you must use the packet to prepare for a debate round. But should you read everything, or should you focus on a few key things? Well, the packet consists of clips of articles, or evidence, that we’ve condensed into cards. Cards have a few parts:
Tag. The bold text at the beginning summarizing the card. Typically, it consists of an assertion and some reasoning.
Cite. The bold text that follows the tag with the author’s name, the date, and their qualifications. There is additional information about the source included after the bold text.
Text. Selected paragraphs from the original article that follows the citation. The most important parts of the article that prove your side’s point are underlined. This is the evidence to support the argument that the card makes.
Before a debate round, you should read all parts of the card so that you know what the article is about. But In a debate round, you should only read the tag, bold part of the cite, and some of the underlining as a part of your speech. You should highlight the underlined parts of a card you want to read. When highlighting, make sure that you highlight words so that the judge can get a clear, accurate sense of the argument the card is making without having to say every underlined word.
Here’s an example card from the 2024-2025 evidence packet:
