Hi! We had a an exciting first day at Lexington Debate Institute and hope to continue the fun over the next two weeks!
After drop off, we headed outside for a quick icebreaker game, "Where the West Wind Blows", where students were able to enjoy a bit of the sun while getting to know their instructors and classmates better. Afterwards, we came back inside and split into our different labs (or classes).
We started off with a few more introductory games, like 2 truths and a lie before getting into the real nitty gritty of what debate is. We started off by talking about the basic structure of an argument: Claim, Warrant, Impact and had students come up with examples of each. Afterwards, we introduced our campers to flowing, the way that debaters take notes. To give them practice flowing, we had them try and flow different songs, such as Handlebars by the Flobots. After flowing, we asked students if they could tell us what the message behind the song was, based on what they had written down on their papers.
After lunch, we came back inside and launched into a discussion about cross examination (cross ex), one of the most intense and exciting parts of debate. Cross ex is a period of time where a debater is allowed to ask their opponent questions about their cases. These questions can be used to clarify certain arguments or point out flaws in the case! Afterwards, we launched into our first mini-debate: which animal would win in a fight. Students were paired off and told to choose any animal (other than humans) that they think would win in a fight against any other animal. Teams would then debate each other, employing the different skills and ideas that we learned throughout the day. It was really amazing to see how much they learned in just one day and we cannot wait to see how much they improve over the next couple weeks!