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Approaches to coaching
Approaches to coaching
Debate coaches need to put aside time each week to work with their team, just as you would a sports team. Timing and frequency of training sessions will depend on teacher availability, the number of coaches, school timetables and the needs of your students.
It is important to note that training must be flexible. While you might have a program or sequence of learning activities written down to refer to, you will likely find that your training sessions will change throughout the year in response to the needs of your students.
Keep in mind that an adjudicator will give your team feedback after each debate and this often provides you with areas for improvement which you should address in your training. You are also likely to spend whole training sessions practising mini debates or discussing your most recent debate.
There are many different ways you can approach coaching debating in a high school. It is important to think about what will work for you and your students in your particular context. Explore some of the example approaches below.
Team (or squad) training
Team (or squad) training
If you have time to work with each team, you can participate in a lot of activities to build skills specific to their needs.
Consider starting with a quick warm-up activity (5 to 10 mins), followed by a skill-building activity (20 to 25 mins) and then ending with a brief reflection or summary (5 mins).
In these sessions, students might:
learn about new strategies and techniques
practise particular skills to build confidence (for example, impromptu speaking games, practising on-the-spot rebuttal, preparing a definition as a team)
practise with mini debates (within your school)
participate in friendly debates (with other schools)
discuss adjudicator feedback from your most recent debate
watch past final debates and respond to each speaker before hearing the next
discuss and share stories of interest currently in the media that may relate to debate topics (for example, education, government policies, health/sport).
Whole school debating society and external coaching
Whole school debating society and external coaching
If you have a large group of interested students in your school you may like to consider a debating society. This is where all grades train together (once a week, for example) and more experienced students take on the role of assistant coaches.
This can benefit all students as younger students learn from their more experienced peers, and senior students build skills as teachers and mentors. It also fosters a school culture that encourages and values debating.
Flipped classroom
Flipped classroom
To maximise practise time and encourage students to become independent learners, you may like to consider a flipped classroom.
This is where students are set tasks (e.g. watching an instructional video) to complete prior to training sessions. This allows for more time in training to be spent on implementation and practice, as well as letting students take the lead in which skills they feel they need to work on the most.
You may also like to consider using a program such as Google Classroom where your students share ideas and complete tasks (for example sharing a news article each week relating to a particular topic). Again, this allows for more time to be spent on practising during training sessions.
External providers
External providers
Many schools invite back previous debaters from their school, who have subsequently trained as adjudicators, to help them run their debating training and encourage a new generation of debaters. You might also consider including in your budget the services of an external coach who can provide your debaters with expert advice and advanced training drills. Many external coaches are also happy to deliver these lessons online for convenience.
It's important to remember that external coaching should not replace the teacher being involved in attending debates, listening to adjudicator feedback and learning valuable coaching skills, but an external coach can really help busy teachers who want their students to get even better at debating!
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