Thank you to Anuj Agarwal, Founder of Feedspot for recognising the inspired efforts of the late Saani Bennetts, who created our blog. If your primary school is struggling to revive student engagement in Year 5 & 6 after all the closures and other challenges of the last couple of years, I would like to recommend our Debate Challenge. Encourage your Year 5 & 6 Teachers to work together and devote Term 3 or 4 to an exciting term where a Debating Challenge project inspires and motivates everyone. An end of term Debate Night allows parents to see their progress and enjoy the fun. You can o ..read more

No one can predict with certainty what will be required for the future however, there are ample signs that listening will be a necessary skill. We don't all have the same cultural background or base knowledge about the world. This isn't something you can tell by observation, you have to talk to people and listen and ask questions. Rise & Shine Debating focuses on skill building rather than winning because it's the skills that will matter later in life. It is more encouraging to see how you can improve than to win for unknown reasons! We will be working in teams with others to solve the hug ..read more

The benefits of debating seem obvious to us, here at Rise & Shine, but you don’t have to take our word for it on how incredible debating is – take a look at the research yourself. The benefits of debating tend to seem obvious to us, here at Rise & Shine. It gives children practice with speech and communication skills, research skills and self-managed study; in writing their speeches they construct arguments and think critically about evidence; in the ‘live’ debate they practice multi-tasking, critical listening, note-taking, and grace under pressure – and it does all of this while enc ..read more

Logical fallacies are the verbal equivalent of optical illusions; flaws in reasoning that sound convincing, but do not hold up under scrutiny. In debating, spotting a logical fallacy in the opposition’s argument makes for easy rebuttal. There are five logical fallacies beginning debaters are particularly likely to fall back on. 1. Slippery Slope If we allow A to happen, then eventually Z will happen, so we should not allow A in the first place. This is usually presented as a hypothetical situation, the outcome of which is taken to extremes. For example: if school sports were optional, some pe ..read more

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion and was once considered to be among the most influential and important of skills. Isocrates wrote that, “We have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts; and, generally speaking, there is no institution devised by man which the power of speech has not helped us to establish.” Although highly regarded among the Ancient Greeks, its dark side was known and acknowledged. Plato was one philosopher who pointed out that the masses are swayed by the most persuasive speeches, which means society and civic life can be controlled by whoever deli ..read more

There are four distinct types of debate topics: Empirical, Comparative, Model, and Abstract. Any given subject matter can be used for any type of debate – the difference is in how debaters are expected to approach the topic. 1. Empirical Topics Empirical topics are often called ‘Simple’ topics because they are the simplest form of debate. They present a statement that can either be true or false, with each side presenting evidence. Debates are always controversial; the central argument is one of opinion, not known fact. While the simplest to debate, empirical topics are often the hardest to s ..read more

In working with teachers who are running debating programs with their students, we’ve found that some teachers like to involve students in coming up with topics to debate. This is admirable and of course, when students are debating topics that are of interest to them, their enthusiasm, engagement and participation is much higher. Although involving students in debating is wonderful, we’ve found that there can be pitfalls with having students choose the topics for a debate. Brainstorming and deciding on topics with students can easily take up a full lesson. In Rise & Shine programs, we oft ..read more

Rebuttal is often the skill in debating that students find hardest. Students are required to listen to the opposing speakers during the debate and write down points to rebut. That alone can be challenging! Students often speak quickly and sometimes don’t pause often. Sometimes they don’t use their allocated time and so a student on the opposing team will only have 2 minutes to listen and write, rather than 3.5 minutes. Students also have slower handwriting than adults. It’s definitely not easy. Not only do students need to write down points to rebut but they also need to think about what to s ..read more

Defining the topic is a very important part of a debate, but one that is often misunderstood or overlooked entirely. A definition isn’t about providing a dictionary definition to the audience. The audience knows what each word of your topic means. What they don’t know, is how your team is choosing to interpret the topic. The way a team chooses to interpret the topic makes a difference to the whole debate. “Defining the topic is explaining to the audience what your team considers the key words and phrases in the topic to mean. Sometimes you will need to define a phrase, not just a word. For ex ..read more

In traditional Australasian debating, each speaker is given a score out of 100, broken down into 40% Matter (the content of the speech), 40% Manner (the way it is presented), and 20% Method (structure, teamwork, and dynamics). The scores of each speaker are then combined to give a result out of 300. Historically, this led to scores that varied wildly, with different adjudicators giving quite different scores to the same performance. The Australian Debating Federation has addressed this problem by restricting the score ranges. In Western Australia, Matter and Manner are both phrased as a score ..read more