Last Thursday, for my special summer debate class for the elementary kids, we staged a final debate. I made a video of it, and I finally finished putting it together earlier today, and loaded it to youtube – not even really much edited at all.
The debate proposition is: "Hurting someone in self-defense is OK." Pretty heavy topic, right? It's because of a story we read in a well-done elementary ESL debate textbook (pictured, right), which uses Korean folktales (in English) as a jumping-off point for debate topics. This means the kids are already familiar with the storylines, which increases comprehension and allows us to focus on the concepts and topics.
The debate was between a "Pro" team (two 6th grade girls who go by Ally and Catherine) and a "Con" team (the teacher – me). I've come to realize that when we have debates, the kids really get a lot out of me being one of the debate speakers – it allows me to model language patterns and argument styles, and it unexpectedly causes them to focus more on the topic – I'm not sure why this works but I've noticed it.
So here is the debate video. Ally is a really good speaker and very high ability. Catherine has excellent English, too, but she speaks very quietly and is hard to understand in parts – sorry for the poor sound quality.