Summer SAVY Session 1, Day 5 – The Great Debate
Day 5: Good afternoon families and great debaters!
I am so sad to see y’all go but so honored that I got to have you in debate class! This week we learned about rhetorical strategies and processes that come down to us from ancient philosophy, we learned the art of the rebuttal and worked hard to improve our public speaking skills. We participated in lots of activities to apply what we learned from rebuttal kickball, to guess my claim, to our three-part Island adventure where we had to debate our way to survival on the Lost Island with its crazy biomes! Our final, formal debate gave us the opportunity to show all the excellent skills we had been honing and everyone did so well it came down to just a few points difference! You have been a wonderful class and I want you all to be very proud of yourselves because you’ve all come so far from our first day. Today I watched our final debate and was absolutely impressed with the quality of your speeches and claims, your clarity and professionalism, and your respect for your interlocutors! Perhaps this evening you can use pathos, logos, ethos, and the five tenets of rhetoric to convince your siblings to let you pick the movie, or maybe to persuade your caregivers of what you should have for dinner, or to get a pet… or whatever is important to you! I hope to see you all in The Great Debate 2 later this summer or next year!
Final treasure hunt reveal: Yoda engages his ethos to command the Jedi to come rescue him. Sherlock Holmes figures out how to fix the SOS box by employing logos and a nearby ship comes to get him, and Florence Nightengale decides she likes the Island, so she uses pathos to make great friends with the wild horses, where she lives happily ever after riding all around – Queen of the biomes! Hurray!