Oral Communication Blog: The Debate on Debate

The Debate on Debate

Debate is a pretty scary word to students who already find it difficult just to put up their hand for a question. Unsurprisingly, educators and students have very strong opinions on debate and whether or not its presence should increase or decrease in the school system. Within the supporters of debate there are certain factions. Some believe it should only exist in the higher grades where students are less afraid of speaking and stating their opinions, others argue that debate is most beneficial if used throughout the grades, starting young.

In both cases, I think it depends on class environment. If you have a classroom environment where students feel that they can state their opinions respectfully without fear, there are strategies you can use to introduce constructive conversing and arguing to young students. This article is from a blog called Cult of Pedagogy written by a teacher who taught elementary for over a decade and now teachers Teachers Education courses. She lists several ways she got her students talking, and under each strategy she includes a list of variations to accommodate different learners and classrooms:

Classroom Discussion Strategies

Going off a discussion I had with my peers about their experiences with debate in the classroom, I have compiled a list of challenges and misconceptions that come with debate, and how they can be avoided.

1) The POP POP 

There is always one or two kids in the class who always have something to say about everything. They are the first to speak and their word is law. They might have very good, constructive ideas, or in the case of Magnitude from Community, (pictured below) have nothing of substance to say but speak with such confidence that no one ever challenges them. Often times with debates, the students are tempted to allow this student to speak for the whole team. An organized and structured debate format would help with this problem. Keeping the students used to the statement, response, statement response format, even introducing a rule where the same person can't speak more than once, or keeping the responses timed.

2. Point of View

An interesting tactic that I have seen used in the classroom is picking a topic that is relevant and of particular interest to the students (perhaps pitting various forms of social media against each other or two popular bands etc.) and then, before beginning the debate, send pieces of paper around and get everyone to write down which side they are on. Then gather up all of the papers and place everyone on the opposite side of the choice they made. The students may be reluctant at first, but I have seen this work quite well, once they get into the debate they want to win so badly that they start thinking of arguments to make that go completely against their own personal opinions. This is a great way to get students thinking about an issue from a different point of view.

3. The Screamer

Since mainstream media, especially recently, really hasn't been providing students with good examples of real debating, many students may believe that to debate means to state your opinion over and over until things get ugly. With younger students, you might get responses like "well that's stupid" or "if you think that then you're dumb" and the like. They resort to name calling and immaturity when faced with a point they can't or don't know how to refute. With older students it manifests itself in almost exactly the same way, speaking over each other, scoffing, etc. The insults are just often more intellectual. Though not always. But debating is equal parts listening and speaking. Students should be taught from a young age how to respond respectfully to someone they disagree with, and introducing debate can be a great way for students to learn that. You could start with a list of phrases to use when you disagree: "I respect your argument, but have you thought of this..." or even highlighting where you agree before going into how you differ: "I agree that... but I feel that..." and then have the student go from there.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure how well debate would work in every classroom. The teacher needs to know their students and gauge whether they would benefit from a formal debate structure or if they would be better suited to a debate-like game like the ones listed in the Cult of Pedagogy article above. I do, however, truly believe that there needs to be more of an emphasis on Oral Communication in the classroom than what exists now. Maybe this means debate, maybe this means more presentations, whatever shape it takes, students need more opportunities to exercise their communication skills from a young age.

Math Blog #8 : Making Mention of Meaningful Measurement Materials

This week I was introduced to an AWESOME resource for teaching Measurement! Measurement Grades Four to Six. Wowie wow. I guess one of the great things about being a teacher candidate is that everything is new and exciting. Whenever I am introduced to a new resource or concept I immediately start thinking about how I could use it and with math in particular (in case my past blogs have not made this evident) I need all the help I can get.

My biggest worry is actually not how to get the students to understand math, its figuring it out on my own and feeling confident enough to teach it correctly. So when I am given a resource like Measurement Grades Four to Six I get very excited indeed. This document breaks Measurement down so well. I love the way this whole document is structured. The language is engaging and accessible and the learning goals are very clearly laid out. But my favourite part of this document is the section on Learning Activities. Each grade comes with two or three fun activities that help students build a conceptual understanding of measurement and apply it to real life. I am ten thousand percent going to use this document in the future. And I mean the very near future. I have already been creating questions for my placement class and I am definitely going to try to make use of this document!

My placement class is currently in the measurement unit and as I marked their math worksheets I could see patterns forming around what the students got right and what they got wrong. Many students could easily remember how to calculate the perimeter of any shape but would often make the mistake making their answer squared. My associate teacher said that many of the students didn't learn why area was expressed as a number squared, they just knew that they had to do it. And so some students were making their perimeters squared as well. So what my teacher does is what this resource strives to do, teach the students a conceptual understanding of the concepts they are learning so they can make logical decisions.

Writing Blog: Helping Students Get Started

As a future language teacher I am constantly looking for resources that will help me shape my teaching style and be the most effective educator possible and many of the articles, discussions, or people that I meet say that writing is an area of the curriculum that poses many problems.The Ontario Language Curriculum  states that students need to become "disciplined thinkers" to be able to write effectively and this comes from being given many opportunities to write (2006). The problem is not that students are not getting these opportunities but rather that they often don't get used to their fullest potential. I have discussed this theory with my fellow teacher candidates and several have said they notice that students struggle to begin writing, but once they start the process is easier. I read a great article on a method to get students thinking before they write here. But I wanted to share a personal example of a method that could help create a balance between overwhelming amounts of choice or lack of freedom in classroom writing.

Last week in my Cognition and the Exceptional Learner course I was placed in a group and we were asked to find ways to use a certain resource or method in teaching language or math. We were given Cubing, a method where the teacher creates a cube and writes a different option for completing a task on each side. We decided to use it to help prompt students to exercise different types of writing. I snapped a picture as we were planning:

As the picture shows, this cube could be easily modified to fit each groups needs and abilities. One cube would have different perspectives to choose from (first person, third person, a dog, a tree) or sentence prompts that can go anywhere in the story, beginning, middle or end. And we would allow each student to roll the cube three times and choose their topic from the three so they wouldn't be completely limited but still have a much smaller amount of choice to pick through.

 I dearly wish I had come across more "games" like this one in my formative years. In my early years of elementary school I spent a couple parts of my day in the "resource" room where I received extra help in writing and math. Anyone who has had this experience will probably agree that its never the place you want to be. Though the resource teachers were lovely people who tried their best to help me, I felt there was always a disconnect between what I learned at resource and what I learned in the classroom. Like my resource teachers had been given incorrect or incomplete information on me. The resource work was far too easy and rarely connected to the concepts I was working on in class and I would be missing my real classwork and feel further and further behind. This was my personal experience and I can acknowledge now that my bouts of self-pity and laziness would keep me from achieving my goal more often than the resource visits, but I still wonder what kind of writer I would be I had had the chance to stay in the class and still learn at the pace that I needed.


Ministry of Education. (2006). Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8. Ontario, Queen’s Printer. Web. Retrieved from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/language18currb.pdf

Math Blog #7: Strategies for ESL Students

Math already comes with a unique set of challenges due to its negative stigma, its mix of number and word problems, and the countless equations (and exceptions) students are expected to know (I'm hiding my English bias so well aren't I?). Then take all of that and imagine it was in a language you barely know. This is the reality for ELL/ESL students, and keeping up with math might seem daunting for both student and teacher, but educators everywhere have been sharing their strategies for teaching math to ESL students in the hopes of making the process easier for student and teacher alike. I'd like to share some of those strategies here:

My math professor Rebecca Bunz has had experience working with ESL students and she shared these strategies with our class:

- Provide concrete examples, models, etc
- Simplify the language not the ideas
- Introduce new vocabulary with contextual support
- Have students keep a personal dictionary; can write definitions in both languages
- Non-verbal cues such as gestures and body language
- Give extra processing time
- Spend extra time to ensure they understand the problem

- Have them rewrite problems in their own words

On my search for ELL/ESL strategies I read an article called "Math Instruction for English Language Learners" on a website called Colorin Colorado, an educational website that provides free research-based information, activities, and advice to parents, and schools on ELL learning. The author, ELL specialist Kristina Robertson writes in the introduction to the article that many people make the assumption that math is a universal language and that many ELL students will excel at it. But she points out that this is not necessarily true, especially since many of these students may lack a prior knowledge of math terms we consider common. And so she goes on to give her advice for math teachers with ELL students and there are a few points I'd like to share:

1) The Importance of Teaching Academic Vocabulary

Teaching the difference between the definition of a word and the mathematical definition of the word. As shown here, expressions like "find X" can be very confusing because it could be taken literally.

- make sure to explain that words can have multiple names

- encourage students to offer bilingual support to each other

Robertson, K. Equation. [Online Image]. 
Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/

2) The Importance of Reading and Understanding Written Questions

She included a good quote from Reading and Understanding Written Math Problems that sums up the problem quite well: "Word problems in mathematics often pose a challenge because they require that students read and comprehend the text of the problem, identify the question that needs to be answered, and finally create and solve a numerical equation — ELLs who have had formal education in their home countries generally do not have mathematical difficulties; hence, their struggles begin when they encounter word problems in a second language that they have not yet mastered" (Bernardo, 2005).

Word problems are generally the most common issue for ELL students because of the language barrier. She suggests explicit instruction of key vocabulary, daily practice of problem solving, repeated readings of the word problem together as a class, and hands-on activities such as movement, experiments, or drawing to help students comprehend the problem (Robertson). 

Reading Strand Blog: Effective Reading

Language literacy is so often taken for granted in our society. When I completed my undergraduate degree, I received countless “polite” inquiries on what I hoped to accomplish with a degree as useless as English. To answer them I first politely corrected their pronunciation of the word useful, and then attempted to express the immeasurable value of spending four years building reading, writing, and communicating skills. Being able to communicate your thoughts and ideas clearly, succinctly, and persuasively in any format is an enormous asset to any job. Knowing how to summarize information, how to process it and retain the important details, and then knowing how to identify which details those are, these are all skills that go beyond a classroom or an office, they follow us into our everyday lives.

Reading is one of these skills we as a society so often take for granted. Someone might say they aren't very good at writing and it wouldn't be considered particularly strange because that statement would most likely be understood to mean the person might not be an interesting writer, or a persuasive or creative writer. However, if a grown adult told you they couldn’t read very well it would sound slightly more concerning because reading as a concept is often considered at its most basic level. When a person thinks of reading it is often of the surface level, just the ability to look at words and understand what they mean on their own and how they work together to form a sentence, but being able to read does not make you a good reader. The Grades 1- 8 Ontario Curriculum states that elementary students need to learn to become “effective readers”, to go beyond just understanding the ideas in a text and to start making connections between past knowledge and applying the new information to new contexts (2006).

IMAGE: TUMBLR SHHHHHHIMLISTENINGTOREASON. Retrieved from mashable.com.

As a teacher you need to be able to teach students to think critically about everything they read because, as I discussed in my previous literacy blog post, the world is throwing information at you every second of the day and you need to be able to interpret what is important, what is real and how it applies to you and the world around you. And this process may look different for each student. Some may have to write their ideas down or need to work in groups to hear other perspectives which may spark their own ideas (a great resources for this is Padlet.) Some student may need more time to process these ideas and though it may it seem concerning when a student is reading slower than most of the class, it is our job as teachers to understand that not every student has the same process. I have always been a slow reader and my father who is a professor is also a slow reader and it is not because we lack the skills to recognize the words, as my elementary school teachers mistakenly believed, but because we read and reread sections of the text in our head that we find interesting and important. It is also important to remember that text takes many forms: prose, poems, journals, plays, films, radio etc. and students need to be exposed to these different types of text in the classroom so they understand how to adapt their effective reading skills to any text they may come across in the future.