Speech and Debate

Welcome to Speech and Debate

Speech and Debate are of extraordinary value to middle school students. Participation in debating can boost student self-confidence, accelerate learning across the curriculum, and improve critical thinking and oral communication skills.

Students in Speech and Debate will:

Develop verbal communication skills including volume, rate, emphasis, articulation, organization, and
word choice.
Develop nonverbal communication skill including body positioning and movement, eye contact, poise,
anxiety and listening.
Develop a general understanding of debate format and responsibilities.
Learn how to work as a team, accomplish individual responsibilities, and put them together to form a
cohesive team.
Collaborate together in research and sharing of ideas to form a goal or point.
Understand debate order, team responsibilities, order of speakers.
Understand points of information, strategics uses of points of information, attitude during points of information, and answering points of information
Develop an understanding of evidence, making arguments, cause and effect, and costs and benefits.
Learn how to answer arguments and basic refutation.
Learn to research television news, reading and newspaper, magazines and journals, books and the internet.
Learn how to make arguments matter, explain your impacts and compare your impacts.
Develop opposition strategies such as refuting the case, making offensive arguments, using off-case arguments
and indirect refutation.

Students will get to be part of a team and debate against opposition. They will learn how to argue both sides of a topic. They will learn how to work together and compete against each other using middle school debate format.

Speech and Debate (Pre req)

Anchor Standard RL.CCR.1 Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
Grade Level Standard RL.8.1 Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Anchor Standard RL.CCR.2 Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
Grade Level Standard RL.8.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.
Grade Level Standard RL.8.3 Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.
Craft and Structure
Anchor Standard RI.CCR.3 Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
Grade Level Standard RL.8.6 Analyze how differences in the points of view of the characters and the audience or reader (e.g., created through the use of dramatic irony) create such effects as suspense or humor.
Grade Level Standard W.8.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
W.8.3.b Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, and reflection, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.
Grade Level Standard W.8.5 With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.
Anchor Standard W.CCR.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.
Grade Level Standard W.8.7 Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.
Grade Level Standard W.8.8 Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
Anchor Standard SL.CCR.1 Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Anchor Standard RL.CCR.6 Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
Grade Level Standard RI.8.8 Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; recognize when irrelevant evidence is introduced.
Anchor Standard SL.CCR.3 Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.