It’s been a busy week in Mr. Casey’s Classroom. This past week Mr. Casey and his class completed their class debate on two topics. The first resolve was “English is the most important subject to study in high school,” and the second was “It is more important to study recent literature (within 20 years) than classical, older literature (1900+). The students were hard at work on lunches, preparing the classroom for the debate. Students spent many lunch periods completing complementary chalk art to set the tone for the room. Mr. Casey set out to finish preparing the classroom by December 4th, so prospective students could see what a classroom would look like, prior to a debate.
Students helped out with arranging desks, cleaning boards, and arranging materials for the debate. After the preparations were made, students watched clips from The Great Debaters to help inspire and motivate their efforts. The movie was well received with many students asking to see the full movie --unfortunately, there is only ever so much time for learning, thus they had to stick to the clips.
After having watched the inspirational clips, Mr. Casey led students into a discussion about debating and some various topics they could debate. Students in both period 1 and 2 were very engaged in the discussion and offered some great questions and insights. After much discussion, students used their online app (Socrative®) to vote for their choice in topic of debate.
Once the topic was chosen, Mr. Casey placed each student on one of two teams; you were either the affirmative, or opposition. In their teams, students selected two speakers for the debate and the others provided quotes and statistics to help form supported arguments. Mr. Casey explained the debate format and gave students 2 days to prepare.
Finally, the day of the debate arrived. Students on both sides (in each debate --we had two periods, remember), put forth great effort and arguments. Some arguments were successfully rebutted as others stood strong without opposition. It was a great opportunity for students to be introduced to debating at a high school level.
