Mindmade Debatable - A hilarious party game for people who love to argue

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On the board, put up a debate topic or a resolution. Students must raise their hand and cash in the appropriate card to make a comment or question.

Their task is to gather evidence AGAINST the other finalists, for example suggesting that they were insignificant, unheroic, and so on. Have someone discuss 2-3 arguments about any simple prompt (i.e. “Spring is better than summer.”). Listeners take notes using as few full, real words as possible -- the goal is to try use abbreviations, symbols, and codes to represent ideas.

How does this resource link to the Australian curriculum?

Each student should then be given a copy of the PowerPoint Template which they can use to frame their research: Each and every student possesses his or her own opinion. Classroom debates enable students to voice their opinions. A debate provides you with an opportunity to conduct yourself in a professional manner. According to the International Debate Education Association, “Debate is, above all, a way for those who hold opposing views to discuss controversial issues without descending to insult, emotional appeals or personal bias. A key trademark of debate is that it rarely ends in agreement, but rather allows for a robust analysis of the question at hand.”

Let’s start by simplifying things. In his book Never Split the Difference, former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss distinguishes between three different voices: an assertive voice, a playful-upbeat one and a calm and soothing tone. To make things even easier, we can forget about the assertive tone because there’s hardly ever any use for it according to Voss. Now, give students in the inner circle 10-15 minutes to discuss the topic. For this duration, all other students focus their attention on the students in the inner circle. Other students are not allowed to speak. Give students a statement and ask them to give all the reasons why they disagree with it. Make sure that the statements are absolute but difficult to disagree with. Rather, he recommends the positive playful voice as a standard one. Smile while talking, be encouraging and keep it light. That leaves us with the calm soothing voice, which he dubs the late-night FM DJ voice. It’s a much slower, quite deep reassuring way of speaking. In that, it not only soothes and slows down the minds of our audience but also our own. So try it if your audience is rather nervous or if you are. In fact, you can test this right now by reading this sentence in an erratically aggressive tone first and then as a late-night FM DJ. In the first lesson, each student needs to choose (or will be allocated) a character relating to the topic of study (for example, eminent Victorians).But perhaps they’re the type of person who’d claim to prevent Russia from acquiring SS-20 ICBMs in accordance with the START II treaty. Now they may come across as pretentious experts who know enough to clarify the ICBM acronym, but not enough to know that SS-20 missiles have long been out of service. The great thing about those voices is that we’ll never have to think about how to say something again. As soon as we’ve found our personal interpretations of those two tones, it’s either playful or soothing. That’s it. Debate Game Progressions Who were the last three people to survive in the balloon, and why were they considered so important? Various topics for students should be posed in the classroom. Decide on a topic based on the students’ age group and level of interest. For instance, in the elementary school, invite students to debate on statements such as, “It is important to eat from all the four food groups daily.” High school students might prefer a debate on “Should schools adopt a dress code?”

Instead, they may be tempted to promise the ban of useless debate games if they ever got to have it their way. Now people may infer they’re self-referential comics who try to circumvent saying something of significance by pointing out the elephant in the room.

International

In this round, the advocacy groups will need to argue that their policy should be selected by the government. They will have to argue not only that they are better than the others at something, but also explain why that means that overall, they are best choice for spending. For example, someone defending ‘more nurses’ might suggest that ‘saving more lives’ is more important than ‘boosting the economy most’. Had an impact on many areas of life – for example: politics, economics, society, religion…it is a good idea to define these in discussion with students. Students in the outer circle take notes about points those students bring up; notes are used in a follow-up classroom discussion and/or for writing an editorial opinion expressing a point of view on the issue at hand. The first student’s Powerpoint is put onto the screen. The student is not allowed to read the slide – it’s there for the benefit of the audience – and they can only speak for 60 seconds, explaining what they did and why they deserve to stay in the balloon (note: they should speak in the first person, i.e. as if they ARE the character). Debates foster a great classroom environment by encouraging teamwork and friendly competition. Students tend to think analytically and express themselves clearly.