Good afternoon, families and students!

It’s been another exciting day of debate and persuasion! This morning, we started the day with flash debates on silly topics (yes, pineapple absolutely SHOULD be on pizza and chairs, it turns out, are just failed beds!) that allowed us to shake off some of our public speaking nerves and practice the foundations of argumentation, refutation, and rebuttal. We gave each other positive feedback and evaluated our own debate performances for weaknesses and things we wanted to focus on improving. Next, we had a mini lesson on writing strong arguments and reviewed the debate speech writing structure. We watched a few debates and created rubrics for evaluation as we acted as the adjudicators for a debate between 8-year-old Phoebe and her mom over whether she should have a cellphone. We were all surprised at how well young Phoebe argued her case and how clearly and deliberately she delivered her persuasive main points! Phoebe leveraged pathos, logos, and ethos effectively, and by the end of the debate, it was pretty clear that she had a very good shot at getting her cellphone (and maybe going to Costa Rica?) Ask your student about the Phoebe v. Mom video and who they thought the winner was and why.

To apply what we learned from Phoebe, in the afternoon we practiced writing open statements, claims, main arguments, using evidence, and summarizing with closing statements. We also watched young entrepreneurs in middle school use their persuasive powers to pitch new ideas to investors on Shark Tank. We then put ourselves to the test in our teams or individually by creating our own inventions and products that were pitched to the “sharks” – Ms. Chandler and me. All of our teams did a great job at persuading us to invest in their companies, and several of our teams used all three rhetorical strategies in the triangle so well that they got other students to invest in their ideas as well!

Tomorrow, we will have review trivia, finish our shark tank presentations, and dive deeper into the art of a good rebuttal. We will continue our Island Adventure Game and choose where to settle (should we go find caves in the mountains? Should we settle on the plains and grow agriculture? Should we stay on the beach and build a big signal fire? The chances of survival will get slimmer with each passing situation, and our teams will have to figure out how to work together to flourish. Then we will finish the day with a formal, high-stakes debate in four teams and see which team will come out the winner and take home the golden trophy!

Until tomorrow,
Ms. Rho