Good afternoon, families and students!

Today was such an exciting and fun day of diplomacy and debate! To begin the day, we participated in an ice breaker created by Ms. Cristina, where we each chose an important item to us and then had to use one of our rhetorical strategies to explain our item to the class. We were randomly assigned either pathos, logos, or ethos and then had to strategize, write a persuasive argument, and practice using either our heart, head, or our cred to convince our classmates of our item’s value. This would connect later in the day to our Island Adventure game, where we would be challenged by having to negotiate with other team members over who and what to bring in our lifeboat to the island, and as we attempted to convince other team members to join us.

For most of the day, we ran simulations with our Island Game to put into practice all the foundations of persuasive speaking that we learned about in theory yesterday. First, we had to decide together which 5 items out of a list we wanted to bring: Is it more important to have rope and an axe? Is it better to have a tarp and blankets? Should we focus more on food and water, and bring a fishing net and a water filter? What about things like containers, pots, or a flint for starting a fire? Although it may seem an easy task, making decisions about survival in a team setting is quite difficult and requires a lot of diplomacy and persuasive speaking skills. The Island Adventure Game provides us with an opportunity to actively flex and build our persuasive debating skills and learn about each of the team members’ strengths. We discovered that some of us are great at research and writing, some of us are wonderful storytellers, some of us are great at using facts and evidence, and some of us make very entertaining speeches. Everyone, however, has a strength and contributed to their team’s success!

During the second half of the day, once we had settled on our survival items, we found out about our characters. We had everyone from Sabrina Carpenter to Sherlock Holmes to George Washington and Moana on the ship! Who would we bring to the Island with us, considering that everyone has a unique set of skills? Once again, we had to debate and convince, persuade and compromise, and even trade with other teams to gather a strong group of survivors that we feel can succeed together! What will happen on the Island tomorrow after we learn about Australasia debate formats, dive into the art of rebuttals, and learn more about creating cogent and cohesive arguments? What will happen when we find out more about the Island’s inhabitants and its topography and resources? Will our teams be able to build a civilization together and persuade others to join them? Or will our teams fall apart? That will all depend on our powers of persuasion and how well we apply our debating knowledge!

Until tomorrow,
Ms. Rho