Spring Blog Hop!

Welcome!! Hopefully you're here because you’ve already "hopped" through several awesome blogs. If you haven't, make sure to start from the beginning (link below)! I'm SUPER excited to be collaborating on this hop with several new bloggers. It's so nice to have an SLP community of support. If this is your first time here, hi! I started this blog as a way to connect with other SLP's working with middle & high school students. I share most of my information on Instagram and occasionally post here when activities need more explaining. If you want more up to date ideas, definitely check out my Instagram here!

Now on to the hop!

Today I want to share with an activity that I created to help my students work on their oral and written language skills. My 6th graders just finished their persuasive speech unit. We spent a lot of time forming claims, collecting evidence, doing research, etc... To get them started and prepped, I created debate task cards for practice. They're simple and their main purpose was to prepare students for forming claims and coming up with evidence. I chose “hot” topics that students could relate to and wouldn’t necessarily require research. I wanted to get them thinking without adding the research element to it.

In this packet you will find 14 debate question cards. Print, laminate (if desired, but not needed), and cut them out. Spend a few minutes in the beginning of the session (or a whole session depending on how much your kids know) discussing what it means to be “persuasive,” as well as the elements of a debate. I let my students choose a debate question (“Should summer vacation be eliminated?”), as well as a side (e.g., “yes” or “no”). Then, we formulate a claim together (e.g., "summer vacation should not be eliminated"), and come up with 3 reasons to support that claim. It's best to do one or two together so that students understand what is expected.

Included in the packet are outlines, as well as a transition word list. I encouraged my students to use transition words as they list their reasons.

Students can engage in debates with one another (if they all choose different sides), share their reasons aloud, or use the organizer as an outline for a claim/evidence writing piece. It’s really up to you on how you want to use this activity!

This worked really well for my students who struggle with coming up with reasons to support their claims. I like that we didn’t need to do research to complete this task, but if we wanted to, we’d easily find information on these topics.

I hope this is helpful for your students, but also engaging! My sessions got really heated :D.

GRAB YOUR FREE COPY HERE

Now that you've reached the end of my post, don’t forget to hop over to the next blog, or start from the beginning if you need to!