Day 16: Debate

Agenda-
Meeting
Class: Pre-AP Sophomore English
Free period
Class: AP Senior English
Lunch
Free Period
Homeroom (during which there was a survey)

Today I decided to do a debate with the Senior class. They had expressed in their last class that they wanted to go over the Anticipation Guide again when Heidi was there because they wanted to hear her opinions and get some good arguments. So this time I made them take sides on the statement and argue their point of view. It was hard because a lot of the arguing was on semantics. Ms. Doughty stepped in a few times to help out one side or the other because a lot of times there were a lot of people on one side or the other. I also got a lot of complaining about not being allowed to be in the middle. Finally I had to tell them to look at it as practice for the AP Exam. I had to say that they will probably be given a prompt where they will have to take a side on an argument. And even if they don’t agree fully they have to convince their audience that their opinion is right. After that the debate got a little bit more heated plus some of the students were more willing to take a side that they didn’t necessarily agree with. They kept trying to use arguments like “what is the meaning of justice anyway?” or “who can really define what is immoral or not immoral” so I had Ms. Doughty who was at her computer at the time to look them up for us. That seemed to help. It kept them from trying to use the argument that the terms were subjective. I think that the activity moved too slowly though. I think that next time I do it I am going to divide the students in half evenly and randomly and then assign them a side of the argument. I also think I am going to try to do a better job watching the time. It would be nice to get through all of the statements. At the end of the play we are definitely going to go back and do another debate about the same issues. I want to see them use evidence from the play to defend both sides of the arguments plus I want to make sure that they understand where in the play these statements come from.