When I switched from teaching French to social studies in 2004, one of my first projects was to develop lesson plans for formal debate and mock trials for my classes. In time, these became a centerpiece of my units, second only to primary source work.
I value the critical discourse of debate in my middle and high school classes very highly, in the first place because it causes participating students to learn a greater quantity of history.
Maybe my interest in debate comes from my own youth. I was sent to parochial schools run by Franciscans who valued debate and the clash of ideas. While I was aware that I caused no end of irritation to my teachers by my willingness to play devil’s advocate in just about any discussion, my patient teachers helped me refine rhetorical practices in writing and speech. One of my religion teachers lent me a book on Aristotle to help me get my reasoning act together! Reasoned discourse was valued in our lessons and appealed to my innate rebel and, while I left high school without the belief system they sought to embed, I did leave well educated.
I value the critical discourse of debate in my middle and high school classes very highly, in the first place because it causes participating students to learn a greater quantity of history. In order to argue effectively, one needs facts and to understand the relationships between events such as cause-effect. Having to improvise arguments, or even plan and compose them for that matter, causes the student to develop schema of information that is long-lasting. In the second place, I hold rhetoric in high esteem because it develops the kind of critical thinking skills so necessary in a democracy. Citizens who are too easily swayed by propaganda or who consume social media without a critical eye are less citizens than they are pawns of powers seeking to use them. I think I left teaching French back in ’04 because I did not feel what I was doing was important enough somehow… but that’s for another post…
From my TeachersPayTeacher Store: Click here for a set of rubrics and training manual for teaching debate.
Discussion Style Debate
The most basic type of debate is the “discussion style”. Teams sit across from each other at a table with a moderator at the head. They give timed, prepared speeches in turn and then engage in improvised cross-examination. The rules are fairly simple and many students came to really look forward to the debate. I required everyone to do this at first, but I soon learned it was best left as an elective unit capstone task for the willing and to offer other things for students who do not like public speaking.
Students who were fearful of public speaking needed rhetorical training as well. The next development was the online discussion. I coded an app at InnovationAssessments.com that worked especially well for moderated class discussions and streamlined the grading and scoring process for me. In every unit, there was an online discussion topic students had to address. Their assignment was similar to one I was given in some online college classes I took. They were to post their response to the prompt, giving two grounds for their position (sometimes I assigned them a position even if they held the opposing view). In step two, they were to reply in the opposing view to the student above them in the feed on the app. Finally, they were to go back later and reply in defense to the student in the class who offered them an opposing view. Once trained, students completed this assignment as a matter of course in each unit. During working periods in class, discussions would often erupt as students wrote and this was marvelous.
I gave formal lessons in rhetoric and identifying logical fallacies and I built a logical fallacy tracking function into the forum app so students could flag posts that contained logical fallacies.
From my TeachersPayTeacher Store: Click Here for a PowerPoint slide show for teaching rhetoric and logical fallacies.
I hold rhetoric in high esteem because it develops the kind of critical thinking skills so necessary in a democracy.
An Elective Course in Rhetorical Strategies
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to teach “Debating Current Events”, an elective course in different rhetorical styles and skills. The course was assigned to me in response to a discussion at the Board of Education level about how the school can try to foster greater understanding and act as a block to rising polarization in society. The course syllabus opened with: “Debating Current Events gives students the chance to participate in the great clash of ideas of our democracy. But it’s not really just about clashing ideas: it’s about forming understanding of the opposing view that leads to appreciation of diverse opinions. Students will examine the historical and social context of emerging current events. They will become skillful consumers of information, learning to carefully examine sources and to read critically. They will understand persuasion not only as a strategy in their own discussions but as a tool to understand and evaluate media communication.” I had six brilliant and engaged students whose opinions fell across the political spectrum. It was a great way to start each day.
My course materials for Debating Current Events are available for sale at my store. Units of study are also sold separately. Unit 1: The political spectrum, tolerance and toleration, Robert’s Rules of Order (I give the class a great deal of control over our work using Robert’s Rules. Unit 2: Aristotelian rhetoric (does not include training in syllogisms) and Logical Fallacies. Unit 3: Toulmin’s Rhetorical Method. Unit 4: Rogerian Rhetoric
The Mock Trial
By far the most popular activity in my classes was the mock trial. In this simulation, students are placed in a historical context as actors in a murder mystery trial they write themselves. I do not know what first gave me the idea to do this, but it was one of the first units I designed when I started teaching social studies. The unit begins with the election of judges and attorneys. The rest of the participants are randomly assigned to teams to role play as witnesses for the defense and the prosecution. I would seed the development of the historical fiction story we were going to write as a class by giving a basic scenario. The murder was placed at some time in history we were just learning about. Over three days, a story emerged, as attorneys and witnesses imagined their side of the story and the means, motive and opportunity were fleshed out. Judges completed an online mini-course in courtroom procedure during these days. The trial commenced on day four, with opening statements and the prosecution putting on its case. It took six to seven days to do this, so we only did one a year (although one year I had the opportunity to teach a half year elective class just in historic mock trials). Embedded in history, the stories we composed really stuck with us. Students would come back a decade later and comment on one of the trials we did and maybe some striking event on the witness stand. I invite the reader to return to the blog in the near future for a detailed account of how to teach an unscripted mock trial unit. To the point of this post, the four attorneys and three judges needed to be models for the class in the kind of evidentiary reasoning that I think we would all agree every citizen would benefit to possess.
Click here to visit my store to purchase a Mock Trial Classroom Kit.
The Model House of Representatives
In the 2019-2020 academic year, I developed a Model House of Representatives unit for my US History classes. Like the mock trial, this unit plan was “modular”: able to be set in any historical time period. Students were trained in a basic version of one of the debate formats used by the United States House of Representatives after being assigned to political parties based on a survey of their personal political leanings. Parties elected their leaders and the majority was set in alignment with which party was in majority in the year in which the session was taking place. Members drafted bills, spoke on the house floor in debating a bill, etc. Crafting bills turned out to be an extremely useful activity in and of itself. Students were assigned a problem of the time period and to craft a law that would address it. I invite the reader now to return to this blog in the near future for a more detailed account of how one to use a Model House of Representatives activity.
Click Here to view Model House of Representatives unit materials in my TpT store.
I have often wondered whether an alternative career choice for me would have been as an attorney. I have an interest in law and justice that no doubt influenced me. But beyond that, these activities bring two important elements to the course in social studies: a deeper knowledge of historical context and the ability to reason well. A positive side benefit is in the ability to spot propaganda in social media, a lesson to be addressed in a future blog, so do stay tuned!
You can preview a set of lessons on consuming social media with a critical eye here and this lesson set is on sale at my TpT store here.