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ESL forum >
Ask for help > Class Debate
Class Debate
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EstherLee76
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Class Debate
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Hi Everyone, I want to do a debate for my 5th grade primary class. This is my first one,really. The debate will be related to food and nutrition and be specifically about having a vending machine in school that will sell healthy and unhealthy snacks. My students don’t have a lot of linguistic resources so I am wondering how to go about preparing them for this. Also I have some very outgoing students and some extremely shy students. I am worry about how to stimulate the shy students and rein in the extroverted ones. Has anyone done something like this? Any tips for me? Many thanks, Esther |
6 Aug 2015
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SaraMariam
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Hey Esther :)
I would make 2 mixed groups - shy and extroverted students together. Risk is that the extroverts might take over the entire discussion but you can steer them by giving each individual tasks that they have to accomplish.
I would give them time to brainstorm ideas. First individually (like each student writes his ideas on a post it for 5 mins) and then they present them to their group and they decide how they want to go about with the discussion. Once they come up with their arguments, they should assign speakers. I would then pay attention that you have a good mixture of shy and extroverts again. However, I would probably have an eye on who will be discussing with who and not let a shy student discuss with an extrovert too much - if you decide to let them have one on one discussions. It might be even more intimidating for the shy student. Try to make the discussion partners fit. If you want to have the whole group discuss together, you might want to establish rules such as "no speaker speaks twice until everyone has spoken".
Don �t forget to assign other roles to those who are not speaking, such as time keeper, a summary speaker or if you want to carry the discussion further even the possibility to other speakers of the group to refute the arguments they heard from the opposite group.
Another way would be to put shy students and extroverts in 2 separate groups. The shy ones might be more comfortable with this solution since they would be working with similar students. But I normally prefer the first option, because they can learn more in a group with different people and maybe become more self confident in the process.
I hope some of my ideas are helpful :) Many greetings to Peru! Hugs, Sara |
6 Aug 2015
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EstherLee76
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Wow! What a thorough reply. Thanks so much for taking the time to help me. These suggestions are very useful. I �ll let you know how it goes! THANK YOU! |
7 Aug 2015
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