The National Curriculum mentions ‘debates’ explicitly, yet this is something that most schools simply don’t have the subject knowledge to teach to a high standard. Debating is an essential tool for a school to use to increase the confidence and communication skills of its children. It can help to develop a positive culture of articulacy throughout an entire school and create well-spoken, persuasive and thoughtful young people.

Furthermore, debate plays a key role in school leaders creating a culturally inclusive curriculum that promotes essential values such as anti-racism, global citizenship and British values. Creating a culture of debate at your school will teach your children to become critical thinkers and challenge the dominant prospective.

This long-running course has been modified for 2020 to include guidance on incorporating debate into your remote learning and how to run full debate sessions online.

The course will include:

• The theory behind teaching debate to children and an explanation of the many benefits it can have on any wider school community.
• Learning how to improve the communication skills of the children in both KS1 and KS2 and how to help children construct effective arguments, develop points logically and use persuasive techniques to influence the opinions of others.
• Learning how to teach children to respond to the arguments of others.
• Opportunities to learn games and exercises that can be used in any classroom, or an extra-curricular club, to increase the confidence and speaking skills of children.
• You will be taught how to hold full debates with a variety of different group sizes and be given the skills to score and judge them.

What you can take home:

• An entire programme of study for your school to use to teach debate to a high standard. This will include flip charts, planning and resources ready to use in school immediately.
• A bank of games and activities that can be passed on to staff in all classes to use with children to improve their speaking and listening skills generally, as well as introducing them to the basic principles of debating.

This course will take place on Zoom and will be roughly 2 hours long. A short introduction video and pre-task will be sent beforehand.