Great Debate! Supporting children/young people to think critically, reflect and express

Course introduction

This in house training is divided into four sections, first session will clarify what debate is, and why it’s needed is a key life skill as well as how it can contribute to the curriculum.  The second session explores formal and informal debate formats, and provides some great resources to support their development with pupils.  The third session considers how debating skills can be developed incrementally with young people, and gives teachers lots of adaptable activities to apply in lessons.  The fourth session adds to these activities and helps teachers to plan their next steps in creating Great Debate in their respective contexts.

Success criteria – colleagues will leave with…

HEAD:  A deeper understanding of what debate is, why it is so important in 21^st Century education, and the skills that pupils/students need to develop to debate well.

HAND:  A very practical and comprehensive set of activities and debate formats that can be applied in a range of educational settings.

HEART:  Motivation and curiosity to experiment with the ideas and activities in the following weeks and months to come.

Contact us for in-house training

What we will cover throughout the day

• Deepen understanding of what debate is, and why it’s so important in education;

• Explore many resources and practical strategies for developing debate with your pupils/students;

• Take a look at ten debating formats to experiment with;

• Understand how to connect debating to many aspects of the curriculum;

• Learn about rhetoric techniques to use in lessons;

• Try some powerful critical thinking activities;

• Explore the three ancient elements of a great speech;

• Walk away with a host of great debating resources;

• Challenge ideas, try activities and enjoy the day!

Target audience

Aimed at teaching and non-teaching staff, primary, secondary and college.

Trainers for this course

Will Ord

Will Ord is an international teacher trainer with 30 years of education experience. He has been a teacher, author, Chair of SAPERE (UK charity for P4C), has written for the Tes, and is c...reator of The Reasoning Tree. He passionately believes in helping young people to become great learners, and sees metacognition as a key part of that story.Read more

See what others have to say about us

Interesting and inspirational

Very informative - covered a broad range of information concisely and with context.

It was extremely well put together and so informative, the pace was great and it would be great to do as a whole SLT, which I will be recommending to my team.