Our Foundations of Debating workshop is a beginner level program.

The course is intended for students with minimal debating experience, and is recommended for both shy and confident students alike who looking to cover the fundamentals of debating.  There is also no need for students to have public speaking experience – there is no assumed knowledge for the Foundations of Debating program.

Students who have completed our Birds debating programs – whether they be our Debating Hummingbirds or Debating Hawks holiday programs, or Debating Parrots or Debating Pelicans term programs – should progress straight to our Experienced Debating program.  However, students who have just done our Birds public speaking programs are recommended to learn the fundamentals in our Foundations of Debating program.

If your child has some formal debating coaching and you’re not sure whether the Foundations of Debating or Experienced Debating program would suit them best, please get in touch and we’d be more than happy to discuss which is best for your child!

At the end of this programs, students should:

• understand the fundamental rules and concepts associated with debating;
• know how to develop arguments and prepare a case as a team for policy style debates;
• have been exposed to common argumentation and rebuttal methods; and
• have participated in a range of practice debates using topics derived from actual interschool debating competitions.

Day #1

Starting off with a range of ice breakers to help students feel comfortable, the core focusses of Day #1 are the rules of debating, case structures for both the affirmative and negative, and speaker roles within a debate.  The day concludes with the students participating in their first debate, having done other debating related activities throughout the day.

Day #2

The second day reinforces the content already covered, and looks in greater depth at argument structure and rebuttal strategies.  Students will also have the opportunity to participate in at least one more debate, as well as a number of other speaking activities to help them develop their skills further.

Day #3

The workshop concludes with a day of debates (at least one, and usually two), revision of what they covered in the first two days, and at least one elective session to help the students develop even further.  Keeping student centred learning in mind, the content and structure of the day will be modified by the coach to best suit the needs and interests of their particular class.

Our classes vary in size every holiday depending on how many bookings we receive – however, the maximum size of our Foundations of Debating class is 8 students with one coach, and 16 students with two coaches.

If there aren’t any spots left, it’s usually because we’ve hit capacity – please get in touch with us and we’ll see what we can do about either opening an extra class, fitting your child into the existing class, or putting you on a waitlist in case any students pull out!

After each program, students will go home with:

• a personal feedback sheet prepared by their coach, which goes through what they’ve improved on, and what still needs some work;
• a certificate recognising their achievements at the workshop;
• a booklet that includes all the concepts they’ve covered over the course of the program, as well as any notes that they’ve taken; and
• hopefully a more enthusiastic approach to debating, and presentations more generally!

If you’re interested in doing another holiday program, we would recommend that students move onto either:

• our Foundations of Public Speaking program, which covers the basics of public speaking – a very different presentation style to debating; or
• our Experienced Debating program, which takes things even further, allowing students to further develop their skills as a debater.

Unfortunately we don’t run any weekly term programs for high school students – that said, if you think there is demand in your area, please get in touch and we’ll see what we can do!