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Posted on June 5th 2015
Harris Federation Debating Competition
Green League – Round 1
On Thursday 4 June our brand new debate team took part in their first competitive debating competition. A mixture of Year 9 and Year 10 students, our team tackled both a pre-prepared motion and an impromptu debate. Yinka, Linh, Samuel, John, Arif and Sahed were victorious in their first round, opposing the motion the ‘THW ban cosmetic surgery’, citing freedom of choice, personal identity and economic value as but a few of their winning arguments. Students were gracious in receiving their constructive feedback and were praised as being “very stylistic”, “knowledgeable”, “professional” and “a strong team”.
During the break between rounds our students were impeccably behaved, they were striking up conversation with other teams and engaging in really high level discussions about the motion. I was incredibly proud of them and was just as excited as they were; I couldn’t believe they were talking tactics for round two!
The second round was an impromptu debate with the motion ‘THB that schools should publically name and shame bullies’. Our students had 15 minutes and nothing but their minds to prepare with. Again they worked really well as a team and gave incredibly persuasive speeches. We were opposing the motion with arguments pertaining to fairness, autonomy, bullying a bully, a school’s responsibility to its students and the nature of bullying. It was an incredibly close debate and we came second by 1 speaker point. The students again accepted their constructive feedback graciously and were keen to discuss the pros and cons of their performance. They officially have the debating bug.
Though the speaking team for each round only consisted of 4 students, our squad prepped together as a group and those students who sat-out, both offered to assist the Chairman in running the debates and offered intelligent and well-presented floor speeches.
The next round is going to be held at Harris Peckham and the students could not be more excited! They did themselves and the Academy very proud yesterday and are already preparing for their next challenge.
Miss Kettle
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