Debate Best Practices

Teachers are invited to submit debate best practices for inclusion on this page. Best practices need not be limited to debate programs, but can also come from use of debate in the classroom and in all subject areas. Send your best practices to Robert Tate at the contact at lower left.

All these practices help students attain standards in speaking and listening, research skills, and examination of issues. They were developed in collaboration with Lisa Willoughby, Grady High School Debate Coach

1. Use Debate for Classroom Management-It is important for students to participate in the decision making process for classroom issues. Since the teacher is in charge, it is also important for the teacher to set the parameters within which students may help make decisions on things such as assignment due dates, when novel or short story to read, etc. Once the teacher has outlined the choices, two or more teams of students are chosen to research and debate the choices before the rest of the class members who take notes, analyzing and evaluating the points of each team's presentation before writing up their vote and the justification for that vote.

2. Examination of Issues--Issues exist in nearly every class. For some classes, particularly those in social studies, the presence of issues is apparent. But even in science classes, there are ethical considerations with many topics such as DNA testing and privacy, replacing human workers with robots, use of environmental resources, saving endangered species, etc. Any time there is such an issue, it is possible to have teams of students research and debate all sides of that issue. In literature, actions of story characters can be debated in terms of the options available to that character as the character is constrained by story setting, station in life, etc.

3. Current Events Presentation--In nearly every class, weekly news stories raise issues which can lead to student debates. Current events can be collected and presented to the class by individual students who summarize the articles and take a position on the events of the article. Each student collects articles on topics assigned by the teacher or selected from a list limited by the teacher. While not an activity for debate, making weekly reports on one topic shows students how to do research on current topics and gives them experience in making public presentations.

4. Extemporaneous Speaking--After a number of weeks of collecting and analyzing the selected topic (as outlined in 3 above), students are assigned a question by the teacher on which they must make an extemporaneous speech based on the information they have been collecting. Students are given a few minutes to consult their files of articles before making the speech which must be based on research and inn which them must take a and defend a position.

5. Simulations-A group of students is assigned to participate in a simulation, for instance, they may be assigned to be school board members who must research and vote on a controversial new policy, for instance, student dress codes. Each student must take a position on the policy and provide input to produce a new policy which can be passed by the board. Further complications to the simulation can be provided by placing constraints on the activity, such as providing a budget within which the school board members must stay in implementing new programs to carry out the policy.