Summer Career Connections Session 6, Day 3, The Next Great Debate
The Next Great Debate- Rho Townsley
Wednesday July 26th, 2023
Good afternoon families and great debaters! Today we practiced open floor rebuttals and deeply discussed how to evaluate claims in order to challenge them on the basis of being unrealistic, unreasonable, illogical or some combination of the three. We will expand on this later when we discuss the problem of the slippery slope and the false dichotomy in competitive debate.
We also learned how to tune into and critique the scope and impact of an argument and how to use more formal debating language. In the afternoon, we prepared for and hosted our first “formal” debate in the Austral-Asia style on the pros and cons of assigning students with homework. Our two debate teams and our team of moderators all did an excellent job of evaluation, reflection, and overall presentation. In fact, the teams did so well that it came down to a ONE-point difference for the Opposition to take the (narrow) win. Tomorrow we will have more formal debates and we will also practice specific opening and closing statements and public speaking skills.
Treasure hunt hint to share with your debater for a trivia bonus question tomorrow: Do some research on two things mentioned within that we will further discuss tomorrow. Be careful – these phrases can mean a lot of different things so you will have to find the definitions that make the most sense in the context