Program Day 4 Lesson Plans ( Final Program Date)

12:00- 12:30 Greetings & Lunch

~Intro
Discuss what they’ve already learned and what they will learn today

12:30-12:45
What they’ve learned
-How to confidently talk in front of other people
-How to structure arguments
-The importance of Delivery
-Claim→Warrant→Impact
(point→explanation→Impact)
-Learned how to effectively utilize your questioning period
-Keep good sportsmanship in round, and have been prepared to argue for things that you don’t
personally agree with in a debate round
-Analyze the arguments of other people

Today’s Objective is to build a debate cases utilizing evidence from reliable sources under a
short amount of time, focus in more on utilizing short time periods to come up with good
questions, and have an official debate in front of a crowd!

12:45-1:00
Game of One Question
Create a set of circumstances and each person can only ask one question to solve it/crack the
code
(Teaches valuable question asking skills for cross-fires under time constraints)

1:00-1:40
Choose two students to stand facing each other in the center of the room. You assign a debate
topic, such as ‘Social media is destroying real social interactions’.

Students are given one minute each to put forward their point.
After they both speak, the rest of the class stand behind the person they agree with. This could
be very one-sided depending on the topic, however only one person should speak at a time.
Change topics and rotate students as often as you see fit to include all the students in the class.

Bathroom Break 1:40-1:50

1:50-2:30
The Secret Jar
Place an empty jar on your desk. Now, give each of your students one post-it/piece of paper. It’s
probably better if they are all the same color for anonymity. Write the debate topic on the board,
such as ‘Video games have a negative influence on teenagers’ behavior’.

Give students a few minutes to write their opinion on the post-it before folding it and posting it in
the jar. Now, give the jar a little shake and ask one student to take a post-it from the jar to read.
This student now nominates another student to respond to this point. This usually sparks a
strong discussion and students seem to be more courageous responding to an anonymous
opinion than that of their classmate’s/friend’s.

Ice Breakers: 2:30-3:30

Have them pair up and analyze different Times Articles. From there they will utilize said
evidence in their own debate cases.

3:30-4:00
Debate/Presentations on their debate cases.

Thank you all for coming, you have officially graduated from the Youth Debate Program