DAC Summer Institute 2010 Teacher Feedback
By Topic:
Getting Started with Debate:
-How do you begin using DAC in the classroom?
-Good to introduce it right at the start of the class as an expectation (can use
smaller debate games at first)
-Communicates that student opinions are valued in the classroom
-Emphasize it will be used pervasively throughout the class / Naturalize
debate
-Table debates: initially give them some time to prep to make students more
comfortable with the idea of public argumentation
-Students love to debate on school policy
-Beware: topics that are centered on teen issues have, in some people’s
experience, contributed to lower level language use and depth of argumentation
-Sophisticated topics produce sophisticated responses and debates
-Sell debate to your colleagues: the more classes in which it’s encountered, the
better students will be in debates in your class (and the less time you’ll have to
explain or reinforce basic debate instruction)
-How much class time should be spent learning basic aspects of debate?
-You can model debates / debate activities that emphasize particular skills at
different times throughout the year or leading up to the first major debate
-This is yearlong process
-Tape-recorded debates make effective teaching tools
-Have teachers debate vocal students initially to model skills
-Have conferences with small sets of students who will share the same role in the
debate during pre-debate prep to ensure they understand basic requirements
-Logistics are always hard at the start, but students pick it up fairly quickly
-Effective to tie skills you hope to emphasize in a debate to the unit in which you
want to emphasize that skill more generally
-Example: work on incorporating textual evidence into a debate at the
same time you work on incorporating it into essays
-Don’t worry about being perfect in knowledge about debate skills / techniques: if you
experiment a little students will figure it out and often turn out knowing more about
debate than you do
-Competition drives this interest
-Important to include debate activities as part of broader arc of your year/curriculum
-This will be different for every teacher
-Debate doesn’t have to be a separate unit—it can be incorporated throughout the year
-Need to balance having rigorous debates about the material and making sure students
have fun
-Don’t want debates to be dreaded like an exam
Logistics:
-What role should be assigned to students who show up for debate but missed prep days?
-They can act as judges or report their take on the debate once it has been
completed
-Timing is also a concern—can this all fit into one hour and twenty minute period?
-Students tend to be more on track during debates
-Most debates last 50-60 minutes
-You’ll have to be fully prepared from prior prep days to get through a full-length
debate
-Perhaps considering cutting out cross-examination or otherwise eliminating
components based on your timing needs
-Keeping track of time is essential  much time can be wasted in transition
between speeches, so don’t allow stalling
-Start the timer on the speech time immediately when it’s a student’s turn
to begin
-Invite colleagues to help you better facilitate the debate
-Modeling the debates for students ahead of time is critical so they know what’s coming
-Winning isn’t the key issue in these classroom debates, though it’s good to pick one just
so the motivating nature of the competition is preserved
-Some anxiety associated with bringing it into the classroom  you just have to pick
your starting point and jump right in
-Students will develop and display the needed skills organically, just as teachers
did in this debate
Ensuring Student Engagement:
-Won’t some kids get lost in the debate or not care at all?
-Possible, but generally competition will inspire
-A video demonstration ahead of time could give students a better idea of what to
expect
-Stronger students act as supports for weaker students on their team
-Students will rise to higher expectations (you’re naturally nervous and excited
when it’s your turn to speak)
-Use preparation days effectively so students are comfortable with the material
-Use smaller debate activities to build familiarity with aspects of debate
-Having colleagues attend and judge the debate makes students take it more
seriously (as does video recording)
-Important for students to know you can debate without being an expert
-Listening to others in your group who may know more is an awesome teaching
tool
-Debates will build great camaraderie in the classroom
-Expressing opinions motivates students and builds confidence
-Debate can be very engaging even when you don’t particularly care about the topic
-Have to intentionally seek out students who are trying to hide and avoid speaking—
calling them to speak publicly can build confidence
-Corollary to this: make sure all your students are speaking in every debate
-Classroom debate is great, but think about using it in the broader culture of the school
-Students would be able to impact change in the school where previously they had
little say regarding the basic policies that affect them deeply
Using Evidence:
-What is best way to instruct what evidence to pull out of sources? What is good
evidence?
-Tough for ELL students
-One approach is to demonstrate the perils of not having evidence (use the table
debate to show how hard it is to argue without support for your facts
-For ELL students, pre-highlight evidence with different colors based on the
positions students will have to take in the debate
-Argumentation over source credibility is a key academic skill
-Good if students are initially embarrassed in debate for brining in a bad
source
-Texts must be appropriate for broad range of reading levels and student needs
-Ultimately, evidence standards will vary depending on the debate and skills you
intend to reinforce
Taking Notes:
-Note taking is a serious concern
-Many students tend to listen first and take notes later, lest they miss the meaning
of what is being said. How do we account for these students?
-Ideas: Take notes on the overhead projector during the debate
-Pass out sheets with sentence starters ahead of time
-Be wary of prepared notes—students don’t get a chance to build this key
skill on their own
-Emphasize note-taking skills during particular debates
-Ask students to hand in their notes the following day, giving them time to
process
-What are some note-taking strategies?
-Practice summarizing points in 5 words or fewer / pulling out one key
word
-Demonstrate a variety of options and let students choose the one that best
fits their needs
-Many kids figure it out on their own  if they understand the logic
behind having them take notes in the first place (i.e. so they can remember
to respond to all of the arguments their opponents have made), then they’ll
figure out what the most important things to write down are
-Ok to start out doing this for them
-Don’t worry about their having perfect notes at the start of the year
-As speeches become more organized, so will students’ notes
-Graphic organizers for note taking?
-Great idea—experiment as you see fit
-Suggestions: clouds with arrows to help visualize arguments, using
multiple pieces of paper (one for each position), poke around online for
ideas
-Listening precedes note-taking
-Strong notes can make the debate much more organized
-Note taking easier when students are familiar with the content
-Avoid over-emphasizing a strict note taking method  this risks having students
miss much of the content portion of the debate
Writing:
-How do you connect writing to debate?
-Though it makes perfect sense to follow debate with a writing assignment, it can
be tough to dedicate a ton of time to teaching the writing process in preparation
for having students write a formal essay on the debate topic after having spent so
much time on the debate itself
-Teach debate as being analogous to creating and supporting a thesis statement
(each individual point in the debate is a topic sentence, which is supported with
textual evidence)
-Easier to teach certain writing skills after they’ve had a debate—anticipating and
refuting potential counter arguments will make much more sense after students
have had to do just that in a debate
-Connect to research paper: spend a day in the library finding texts to support the
debate
-Good idea: create an anchor chart explaining how to visually break down the
structure of a debate AND make one explaining how to break down the structure
of an essay. Hang these up next to each other in the classroom to demonstrate the
direct connection between debate and writing.
-Good idea: use an example essay that a student (or someone else) has already
written and break it down into key points that you can then fit into the
organization of a debate
-Writing and Math:
-Kids tend to disregard writing assignments from math courses
-Answering open-ended math questions requires good writing skills
(example: using evidence from a graph to demonstrate a point)
-Debate in math can demonstrate that the types of thinking used in more
traditional writing courses are also critical in a math environment
-Take a model debate (likely from a video) and break it down into the constituent
parts of an essay
-Note: the opening statement portion of the debate most clearly follows
the steps involved in an analytical essay
-You can use pre-ordained essay topics that you are required to teach (by your
school, content team, etc.) as great debate topics—kills two birds with one stone
-You can assign a post-debate writing assignment without walking students through the
whole formal essay writing process (thus saving some time) and save the longer writing
instructions and timeframe for a non-debate week when you want to emphasize essay
writing more directly.
Assessment:
-How do you hold students responsible for materials they are not assigned to cover?
-Assessment: how does we accomplish this?
-Assess with different standards for different groups of students who may be at
different knowledge/skill levels
-Can tape debate and refer back to it
-Ask students to act as the official judge so the teacher is free to take notes on
individual performance during the debate
-Impressionistic grading works decently (students tend not to dispute the grade) if
students have a clear idea of what is expected of them
-Easiest aspect of debate to grade is prep work (particularly if you give several
preparation assignments (e.g. find articles, think up questions, etc))
-This prep work also facilitates a good debate
-Essential to measure how well the succeed in pulling key aspects of the text to
make a coherent argument
-Grading notes from the debate ensures better listening
-Asking students to write a post-debate reflection can also help you gauge how
attentive students were during the round
-This can be either about who student thinks won, how the debate went, or
which side you agree with
-Can just give one grade for entire debate project: have them make packet of prep
work, notes, post-debate reflection, etc. and combine that with a rubric you’ve
filled out for each student while she is speaking based on the particular objectives
you’re trying to measure in that unit
-Important to be deliberative in structuring your debate and assessment based on
what particular skill you want to teach (ex: rubric in one debate can focus on
opening statement)
-Can structure the skills you want to emphasize such that they are
applicable to all participants in the debate, not just persons in certain roles
(example: making cross-examination your centerpiece for assessment can
be a challenge if only a few students actually take on this role, while
making the assessment based on using textual examples can easily apply
to every participant)
-Strong content knowledge should clearly be fore-grounded in any assessment and
explanation of expectations to students
-Being able to complete the assessment in the moment (e.g. filling out a rubric
while each student speaks) is one of the nicest aspects of using debate—there’s no
grading to be done at home
-What if you miss something a student says?
-Probably a little inevitable and not the end of the world
-Other students will likely ask him to repeat
-Can use a video recorder to solve this problem
-Have students assess one another to practice identifying when skills are used well
-Choose winners in the debate based on the skills you want to emphasize (ex: the
team who best uses textual evidence wins)
-Don’t stress too much about assessment—most students do pretty well and it’s
fairly easy to get an intuitive sense for how much effort a student has put in
Committee Debate:
-Committee debate is great because it allows you to think through a particular position
thoroughly before moving onto another issue
-Committee is favorite type of debate—students evaluate one another, must navigate
more complicated group dynamics, and ask questions that will drive the learning they are
interested in
Socratic Seminar:
-Students sitting in outside circle need to be responsible for something so they don’t drift
off
-Could give them checklist of things to be looking for
-Could highlight the relevant parts of the referenced evidence
-Could require them to explain the differences between their discussion and the
one they observed
-This approach would be difficult with a contentious topic
-Possible to do with multiple points of view at play in discussion
-You can decide if you want different students doing different readings or you want
everyone to have the same set of background readings
-Idea of having different readings is that students are learning directly from one
another and better feed off each other’s points
-Reading circles are very similar to this task: everyone is assigned a particular role for
their group discussion; following the discussion, you can invite one representative from
each group to meet in the center of the class to share thoughts from their individual group
-25 people in a classroom is probably as large as this activity can get
-There’s not enough asking of questions going on. Why?
-This comes with experience (will get better at the end of the year)
-Can have students write down questions ahead of time
-What if there’s too much silence?
-Some is ok—give time for students to think
-You can have your own questions prepared ahead of time and jump in
-Generally not a huge problem
By Content Area:
ELL:
-ELL students with limited language skills need clear instruction in basic debate
approaches
-Good to have useful debate terminology and basic instructions prominently
displayed in classroom
-Evidence and ELL
-For ELL students, pre-highlight evidence with different colors based on the
positions students will have to take in the debate
-Soapbox activity is great for building desire in ELL students to be expressive
-For ESL 1, it’s fine to have students build basic skills that will be called upon for a more
complicated debate in a subsequent year
-For ELL students, you can also use debate in advisory periods where the native language
is spoken
-For ELL debates, a way to ensure students use texts they understand is to have them find
their own sources for the debate. The stronger students will select more complex texts,
while all students will feel more ownership over the material.
-For ELL, create lists of terms / phrases that will be useful in particular debates
Math:
-Useful in physics / algebra?
-Works well in physics, harder in algebra
-Best for equations with multiple avenues for solving them, but best in
discussing analytical questions instead of procedural ones
-It’s ok to have a debate even if you prefer students use a particular
procedure in the end
-You allow students to arrive at the logic you will use on their own
-In the end, you always still have authority to require students
follow your expectations
-Debate is great way to see skills and assets of students that might not otherwise
come out in some classes
-In Math, can use sports analogies or similar interesting topics to get students using
statistics, making talking points, etc.
History:
-History team benefited greatly from collaboration over topic ideas
-Consider doing this within content teams in schools