As the second week continues, our campers continue to impress us with the quality of their work. This morning, we discussed the concept of “blocks”. Blocks are responses and arguments that debaters pre-write. Campers thought of arguments that they thought were the most likely to be read at the camp tournament, and then pre-wrote responses to these to “block” those arguments. We compiled a list of the most common arguments that campers thought would be read during this tournament and then everyone chose a specific argument to write a block to.

Afterwards, we broke back into our partnerships where campers worked more on their cases until lunch. Many of our campers were able to finish a rough draft of their first case by the end of the day yesterday, so they spent the rest of the morning tweaking that draft and putting the final touches onto it.

For lunch, we followed the typical routine and went to the field house to unwind and eat.

After coming back to our rooms, we worked more on our cases. This time, campers focused on their second case, to make sure that all their cases were complete by the end of the day. We were so happy to see how productive everyone was and to see how much they were getting into their research.

We decided to reward the campers for their hard work by merging the labs for a big group game, where all the students could participate for the last 30 minutes of camp.

We are so proud of everyone for the hard work that they put in today and we are excited for tomorrow to begin practice debates and going over strategy!