English+debate+Rich+Task


 * English Debate Case Study **
 * Subject: ** English
 * Class size: ** 19 pupils
 * Age group: ** 18-19 years old
 * Teacher: **
 * Number of lessons/time: ** 2 x 90 min.

We had an opportunity to lead two lessons with a last year class. The teacher didn’t have a special topic we had to follow, so we made up our own. The only request the teacher had, was getting the pupils to talk English. We chose to make the students debate against each other about streaming/downloading music, movies and sport. Before we decided the topic we handed out questions cheats asking what they would like to do or were interested in. Many wrote sports. The teacher kindly gave us 2 full lessons for us to explore our experiments.

Firstly we started off with an icebreaker game which involved talking English. The game is called Balderdash. The point of the game was to make the students ease up and start talking and to have a bit fun while doing it. We started off telling the students to split up in 4 groups with whoever they wanted to. Than we gave them a set of plain papers and balderdash cards. There are 5 different types of topics in the balderdash game So there is one dasher, everyone takes turn being the dasher. The dasher draws 1 card from the deck which has one word and one definition. The dasher calls out the word but not the definition of the films, laws etc. For example the dasher would say “Laws – In Missouri it’s illegal to drive….” and then then everyone for themselves will write down what they think the answer is. The dasher would write the correct answer (with an un-caged bear) and then check everybody else’s answers and then go on to the next round with a new dasher. If you had the correct answer, or parts of it, you could collect points and the one who has the most points in the end will win. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We had them going for about 50 min and at the end we split the class into 3 groups <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We had them thinking about how streaming/downloading would affect the different types of social groups. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We also had them thinking about different statements they could use against each other and what they could attack and defend themselves with.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">First lesson: **<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Balderdash
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Game roles **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Initials
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Film
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Names
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Laws
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Words
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Artists, celebrities and sportsmen.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Smalls businesses.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Average People.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The students had a little more time to think about statements and how they could win an argument. After that we seated them by their groups in a big circle. Reading out statements which each group would respond to and then argue with or for.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Second lesson **<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">: Debate

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Streaming and downloading music, movies and sport is a very hot topic in debates across the world, so we are giving the students a chance to expand and make their own, maybe new opinions about the topic since it’s a big problem in a lot of countries. It’s also a topic that’s easy to be interested in for young people because a lot of them are involved in streaming and downloading. Connecting students with today’s issues. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The debate had a lot of personal relevance since the students had to tell the whole group what the though <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">17 students rated the class <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">7.9 <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">out of 10. Students thought the topic was interesting and they generally really enjoyed the icebreaker. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Some students said that we had too many similar statements and it got a bit boring in the end. Some also thought we should have directly asked some pupils in the debate as they weren’t participating. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The students seemed to enjoy the icebreaker and were keen to keep on going for the whole lesson. There were happily chatting in English and laughing their way through. In the beginning of the second lesson, they had a lot to write about. When we started reading the statements they got into it alright, debating each other quiet well. Although I felt that the same answers came up quite a lot which could be because the topic weren’t big enough and we put in far too many question just for the sake of it. Maybe we even had far too much time. There were also to little people involved in the discussion. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">There was one problem; there were too many people in the class for the shy ones to pot themselves in the spotlight, perhaps it could be because it’s in another language
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">How Did It Relate To Our Research? **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">What did the students think? **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">How did it go? **
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Thank you **

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> All the members of Learning School would like to thank GFS for letting us stay at your school, the teachers for giving us time with their class to further our research and the students for being such willing and enthusiastic participants.