Service: Teaching English Club

            Today we held the third and final meeting of the News Casting and Writing unit before the groups will present the news casting videos that they have made. Immediately after the groups gathered in Miss Debbie’s classroom afterschool, they got to work. Some of the groups worked within the classroom, while others went out to shoot footage for the videos that they are creating. Amidst the activity of all the groups, the twelfth graders present continued planning for the House Team Debate competition that will be held early the following year, soon after we return to school from the Christmas break. This scheduling of the event was one of the things that we discussed, as we were trying to figure out when it would be best to release the motions, whether we will give the groups time to case build before the debate as is traditional, and whether the debate will be made private or public, as well as the time that they should be held after school. It was decided that due to time constraints, we will not give the team official case building time before the debate, and instead, we will release the motion a few days before the debate, and they must case build in their own times, and come ready to immediately start the debate on the day of the competition. We also agreed that we will make the first two rounds private, and the third and final round, will be the only round that is public. Other details and changes we will work out as time goes, and as we hold the Debate unit of the English Club later on in the year. Aside from this we also discussed who to invite to help adjudicate the debate, and the details that we will release to the house teams, about the teams that they must form for the debate competition. This include that each house team will need to send two teams, and theses teams will consist of students from grades 9 to 12. Though we would like to involve as many of the grade levels as possible, we decided that the youngest participants should be ninth graders, because if the participants are to young, they might not have enough general knowledge and experience or critical thinking ability to debate that well, putting it bluntly. We also decided that at least two grade levels must be represented in each team, to even out the experience levels of the different teams, as a team consisting entirely of twelfth graders, will likely win over a team consisting entirely of ninth graders, even if both teams do not have prior debating experience. This is an overview of the things that we discussed today.