WestGATE+Y7-8+Debating+and+Public+Speaking+2014

 A group of Year 7 and 8 students met with Mrs McNab to learn more about public speaking and debating.

**Having Voice as a Public Speaker** Our first workshop was not so much about how to speak, but rather the importance of actually having a 'voice'. • We discussed how an opinion is formed, from early childhood through to university and adult life. • We also discussed how, as children, we often don't have a 'voice' of our own and someone else speaks on our behalf. • We listed things that we cannot do as children, e.g. vote, sign legal documents etc, which effectively means that, at this time in our life, we do not have a 'voice' as such. • We read a story that Ms McNab had written about a lonely tennis ball and how the tennis ball does not have a voice. • We watched a youtube video clip about a lonely tennis ball. • All this was to introduce us to the idea of giving a 'voice' to a fictitious person. We decorated a tennis ball and created a personality, goals and ideas for it. We could develop any personality we chose. • Then we introduced our tennis ball person to the class and spoke with ‘voice’.

**How to Prepare a Good Speech** • We watched a presentation that Ms McNab created about how to prepare a good speech. Follow this link for some useful tips. • We heard a speech presented by a 12 year old girl to the United Nations about the state of the world, including the environment and poverty. We discussed how this young woman had managed to get a voice. She and her friends raised the money themselves, did the research, and were passionate about their cause. • Mrs McNab issued us a challenge to think about the problem of two endangered species that live next to each other and how we can protect them both. She referred to the penguins and sea lions who live in close proximity at Curio Bay. Considering that sea lions eat penguins, it is obviously quite a difficulty.

**Debating** • We learnt about the structure and techniques of debating. You’ll find a number of resources from Mrs McNab here.



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• Our debating teams were given a debate topic and about an hour to prepare for debates. media type="file" key="Debating Moot Santa.mov" width="298" height="306"media type="file" key="Debating Moot The Joker.mov" width="298" height="306" media type="file" key="Debating Moot Superman.mov" width="302" height="294"

• Debating adjudicators have score sheets to judge the arguments from both the Affirmative and Negative teams. They judge on matter, manner and method. You’ll find this resource helpful if you have to adjudicate a debate.

**If you are interested in debating** [] []

**If you are interested in a career that uses debating** Advocating your point, rebutting arguments and raising counterpoints are all elements of a good debate. While most jobs involve decision-making, which is the final result of any debate, some fields use debate as a primary professional tool. Dedicating your professional career to debate means either teaching debate skills or using these skills in everyday work. Law, politics and management are careers where you need to be good at debating.