A moot point
Ratna Rao
Debate is a powerful strategy for students to develop a range of skills. It can develop an awareness and understanding of pertinent questions in the world around them. It can help enhance speaking and listening in the primary sections, but can go beyond these skills and develop logical, analytical, and critical thinking skills as well. Debates are useful assessment tools to gain insight into students’ understanding of a topic. Other than these implicit skills, many other explicit skills can be taught to students like brainstorming followed by organizing of thoughts, ideas.
Brainstorming: This is one of the most important skills necessary for generating ideas. It can be done individually or in groups.
Group brainstorming
Divide the class into groups. Announce the topic/write it on the board.
- In each group select a leader.
- Let each group discuss and write down their ideas on a sheet. At this point emphasize that no idea should be discarded or made fun of and no idea is correct or incorrect.
- Let the group leader come forward and stick/paste
Individual brainstorming
a) Give students time to think.
b) Ask them to put all their thoughts, however childish or mundane, on paper.
c) Guide them to organize/prioritize these ideas.
Organizing ideas
- Write the numbers one to ten on the board.
- Let the students look at all the ideas and delete ideas that are not related or are too vague.
- Put similar ideas together.
- Then rank the ideas according to their importance and relevance.
- Then ask the students to give an evidence/example of each point listed.
- One group can pick up one point and give as many evidences/examples as possible. This will help students organize ideas and build evidences and arguments in favour of their points.
Make it clear that no interruptions are allowed when a student is giving his/her ideas and that everyone’s ideas should be respected.
There are many ways of debating that can be taken up in bigger classrooms to give every student a chance to express his/her opinions.
Four corners strategy
Draw/divide the class into four corners with each corner representing Agree/Disagree/Strongly agree/Strongly disagree. Post the names of the corners. Tell the students that they have to take a stand for each statement announced and run to the corner they think is right.
Announce the statement clearly and loudly. The students listen to it carefully, think for some time and then run to the corner they feel is the most correct.
Ask the students gathered in one corner to discuss among themselves why they chose that corner. Allow 10 minutes for discussion.
Invite each group to share/discuss their arguments and why they feel strongly or otherwise.
Ask the groups to give their opinions against the stand taken by each other.
It might happen that one of the corners remains empty. E.g., If they are asked whether the title of the lesson they learnt is appropriate, the students will think over the lesson they have learnt and run to whichever corner they feel is right.
Inner circle – outer circle strategy: It is also called Socratic Circle strategy.
- Divide the class into two groups. The first group forms the inner circle and the second group the outer circle.
- Announce the topic.
- The inner circle students listen to the topic and give their ideas for the topic. The outer circle students just listen and note down the points.
- Once all the points are exhausted, the outer circle students give their arguments against the topic.
Another way to do this activity is to let the students stand in circles and play music. Let the inner circle move clockwise and the outer circle anti- clockwise. When the music stops, the students standing in the outer circle and the inner circle face each other and debate the topic announced by the teacher. Let the process continue for some time. The pattern of movement can be changed every time so that a new pair is formed. Continue till the students exhaust all the arguments and counter arguments on a topic.
Think–pair strategy: This strategy works very well in formal debating.
- Declare the topic. The students work independently, brainstorm all the for and against points, collect evidences from different places.
- Divide the class into pairs. Let each pair sit together and discuss their arguments and counter arguments.
- Again change the pairs and make new pairs and let them discuss and weed out the weaker points, select the strongest point and the evidences, arguments for this point.
- Present this argument before the class. Role play debate strategy: This is also called the Lincoln-Douglas debate format.
Role play debate strategy: This is also called the Lincoln-Douglas debate format.
- Some topics are such where the decision affects many stakeholders. Announce the topic and decide who the stakeholders are.
- Make chits and let students draw them.
- Now group them according to their chits.
- Each group will play the role of that stakeholder and put forth their arguments for that role.
E.g., Should students be given homework? This question/topic has many stakeholders like students, teachers, principals and parents. Each student/group of students will represent one group of stakeholders and argue/put forth their points.
• To inculcate moral values in students you can use the fairy tale debate.
• Take any famous fairy tale.
• Narrate the story to the students.
• Divide the students according to the decision made or work done.
• Let them make arguments and get evidences from the story.
• Debate in the class.
E.g., The story of the two cats and the monkey. Here, while pretending to distribute the roti equally between the cats, the monkey kept eating the roti till there was nothing left. Ask the students – Is the monkey right in its act? Why or why not? Let the students take a stand for and against and debate the topic.
Debating is perceived to be a specialized skill that only a few can master, but debating needn’t be daunting at all, it can become enjoyable and easy to learn through these interesting ways.
The author is a teacher educator at Calorx Teachers’ University, Ahmedabad. She can be reached at ratnarao25@gmail.com.
