Training For Triumph

Teaching a Speech and Debate Class for Home Schoolers
by Donna Reish

For four years, we have been teaching and coaching speech and debate for home schoolers in northeast Indiana. Last year, we took the plunge and began writing materials and speaking to those who wish to begin speech and debate classes and clubs in their communities. We try to share our experiences with others because speech and debate are such vital skills for students to acquire. We have had great joy in watching a student who was afraid to answer the telephone or stand up at the end of his table in class in front of four other students to talk for thirty seconds about his favorite book become an excellent speaker who wins competitive speech events - and then goes on to preach at his church or lead someone to Christ.

Public speaking is a skill that most young people are terrified of learning. They often do not have opportunities to practice this skill in the home environment. Debate is another excellent communication and thinking skill that is truly best taught in a group environment due to the nature of needing four students in which to debate, as well as others to give feedback. Both skills equip students “to be ready to give an answer to those who ask of the hope that is within them”; prepare them for being leaders in their families, communities, and nation; and give them confidence and preparation to face job interviews, scholarship reviews, and much more.

Speech, Debate, or Both?

Speech and debate are often thought of together simply because in order to debate, a student must learn to speak. One can speak without learning debate skills, but we combine the two for the most effective outcome. Our experience has been that a student often “just wants to do debate”—none of those speech things—then gets involved in speech and loves it as well, The same is true of those who think debate looks too difficult and only want to do speech. Once they get a taste of debating, they enjoy it too. This article will assume that you desire to start a class or club for both subjects, and you can pick and choose the approaches if only one of them is desired.

What Is Debate?

Policy debate is the most popular form of debate and the one that we teach the most extensively. It is a four person debate competition in which two teams of two students debate against each other in a ninety minute round of competition. Each student has certain speeches (They speak equally and in a certain order.), and each one has a chance to do cross-examination on a member of the opposing team. In a debate tournament, each team will have opportunities to be the “affirmative” team and the “negative” team the same number of times (except in the case of a bye); thus, each student must learn, research, and study that year’s topic extensively enough to argue both sides at any given moment.

The resolution (the topic that will be debated) is set at the beginning of the academic year, and all students debate about the same topic the entire year—on both sides. A team (of two students) writes what is called a debate plan and uses that plan for the whole year to argue that the resolution should be changed (though teams often rewrite plans throughout the year as their plan gets solved by the government mid-season!). When the team is on the negative side during a tournament, they argue that the affirmative team’s plan will not work and the United States should stick with the current system. (Last year’s resolution was that the US should change its policy toward one or more of its protectorates.)

We coach and teach policy debate in preparation for tournaments that are sponsored by debate and speech clubs all around the country, following the National Christian Forensics Communication Association (NCFCA) guidelines and resolution. This is the home school debate and speech league. It was founded several years ago by Home School Legal Defense and Michael Farris’ daughter, Christy Shipe. A few years ago it grew so large that it broke off as its own organization, and is today its own entity, no longer a part of Home School Legal Defense Association (though HSLDA still supports and encourages it and Christy Shipe is still on the board of the organization). In contrast to public school (and even some Christian school leagues), NCFCA’s debate resolution for each year is never a topic that forces a student to argue for something he is convicted is wrong (e.g. abortion, euthanasia, etc.); the debate topic each year is never a moral issue.

A Club or a Class?

Some people want to jump in to speech and debate right away by getting involved in competitions. Others just desire for their students to learn the skills of speaking and debating and will consider the competition later. If you desire to teach students the fundamentals of speech and debate, you may want to start by offering a class. Then, any students who enjoy either speech or debate (or both) may pursue competition by forming a speech and debate club.

In our area, we offer a class each fall for thirteen weeks in which we teach the fundamentals of policy debate and public speaking. The second semester of the school year, any students who desire (those from our class, from previous classes, or those taught at home without a group) may join our speech and debate club. As a club (during the second semester of the academic year), we do not have formal classes, but instead go to tournaments together, host home tournaments, share evidence and information, and have practice sessions. The primary teaching comes through the first semester class. Last year, we had fifty students in the class in the fall. At the end of the class, all of the students were required to participate in one tournament (unless parental permission was given to not participate) in speech, debate, or both. During the second semester, twenty-five of those fifty students went on to be in the club and compete in one to eight tournaments.

Starting a Speech and Debate Class

To start a speech and/or debate class in your area, you might want to do any or all of the following:

Find a place to hold the class.
Secure a site that is large enough for the group you think you will have attending. This site should have one large meeting room (size is dependent upon the number of students you anticipate) and some smaller rooms to break up into to practice speeches. When we had thirty students, we had a meeting room that was large enough for five or six eight-foot tables and at least six other rooms to break up and debate and speak in. When we had fifty students, we had eight or nine eight-foot tables in one large room and another ten rooms for debating and speaking in small groups.
Determine class length and times.
Decide on the length of your class and the number of sessions. We found that we needed a minimum of three hours per week for our class, and four hours would be even better (again, this will be based on the number of students in your class). We had thirteen weeks of classes the first year and eleven the next. We do not recommend having less than twelve weekly sessions, or you simply do not have time to cover all the basics.
Determine ages of students.
You may choose to have high school students only if your space is limited, or you may choose to just have a speech class for elementary and junior high students, and skip debate this year. (If you do the latter, you may desire to use a directed curriculum with places for the student to fill in notes, outline speeches, etc. such as Speak Up!by Kayla and Cami Reish (Training for Triumph, 2003). Since we teach speech and debate with the intention of training students for competitions in the NCFCA league, we open our classes to students ages twelve through eighteen by January 1st (the league guidelines)—though our daughters do offer elementary and middle school speech classes various times throughout the year.
Choose curriculum.
Decide on your curriculum for the class. You may obtain speech and debate books and tapes from the library and make up a curriculum as you go along, or you may desire to get materials published by those involved in homeschool speech and debate such as An Introduction to Argumentation and Debate by Christy Shipe (HSLDA, 1998) or Ready to Give an Answer for the Hope That Is Within You by Ray and Donna Reish (Training for Triumph, 2003). The Shipe book is strictly debate, but it gives a lot of details concerning policy debate to new students. Ready to Give an Answer covers speech and debate. Both of them include forms for the NCFCA league. The Reish book has details on how to host classes and evaluate students’ speeches. It is nice if each family involved in the class can obtain a book, so the students can read the material at home that you are presenting in class.
Advertise.
You need to spread the word about your class. If your home school community does not have speech and debate at this time, be ready for an onslaught of students. Speech and debate seem to be sweeping the country in home school circles. You need to determine ahead of time how many students you will be able to handle according to the amount of help and space you have. You might want to include this number in your advertising, along with a note indicating that the spaces will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Usually an article or advertisement in your local home school support group newsletter is all that is needed for advertising.
Host a kick-off meeting.
It is good if you get all the students and at least one parent from each interested family together for a kick off meeting in which you present the details of your class. Often, a parent will bring along the students he or she wants to enroll in the class, and once the students see what it is all about, they are eager to join. Likewise, a student may have heard about peers in a neighboring community doing this and drag along a parent to see if he can join. Either way, your kick off meeting will help some decide whether they really want to take the class or not. In our kick off meeting, we like to have a mock debate (especially humorous ones in which students are debating a funny topic, like whether they should order pizza or whether sisters should share clothes) in order to let them get a taste of what debate is like. We have had past students come and give an explanation of debate, but all of the technical terms have a tendency to intimidate the students and overwhelm the parents. Keep it simple. Also, we have past students give various speeches from the NCFCA speech categories to show parents and potential students the skills that can be developed in the class. (Be sure to have a sample of a dramatic event, such as humorous interpretation or dramatic interpretation as many students are interested in learning dramatics.)
Determine the costs.
We have charged between nothing and a couple of dollars per session per student for our beginning classes so far (just enough for the Reishes to each supper after class and to pay our college students who help us). The amount you charge (if any) will be based on the time you have for the class, whether you use volunteers to help you with the class, whether you are paying former debaters or college students to help teach, how much the families will spend for materials, etc. In addition to class fees, be sure to calculate the costs of any shared materials. For our class, we purchased some books and videos from the NCFCA (in addition to each student’s text book purchase) and photocopied debate plans, evidence, and speaker feedback forms. Do not underestimate the cost of doing all of this. (You may want to charge $10 to $20 per student for copy costs in the beginning with the option of having another payment midway through, if needed.) By the end of our last class, we had over $800 in copying costs for the shared debate evidence the students found that we photocopied for each student, feedback forms, sample cases, etc., and during our last couple of classes, we have used over three hundred feedback forms per session.

Structure of Each Class

The structure and format of your classes will be based on what you are teaching (speech, debate, or a combination of the two), how many students you have, the length of your class meetings, the number of class sessions you have, and more. In our classes, we intermingle speech and debate each week. We have found the following structure to work well for us:

At the beginning of each session, Ray writes the schedule on the board for that day. We rarely get to everything we want to do, but this does get us started anyway and lets the students know what is in store for the session. (As to what we do each week, we go in order of the Ready book and teach the speech types and debate theory a little each week, assigning outside reading, speeches, and doing activities and games that reinforce that week’s teaching.)
Ray assigns two students each week to give a three to six minute devotional in front of the whole class, preferably something about communication, if possible. These two students kick off each class. (We start out recruiting former students for this until new ones are comfortable enough to volunteer.)
While the devotionals are being shared, Ray discreetly goes around the room and checks each student’s sermon notes. Each student is expected to take notes during the sermon at his church; if a student is unable to attend church that week, he is permitted to listen to a tape, radio broadcast, etc. and take notes over that. Ray does not evaluate the notes at this time; he just makes sure they are done and provides accountability. Each student’s note taking skills will increase through frequent note taking.
Next, we usually have a lecture over the information they read from their Ready to Give an Answerbook about speech. We use a “Teach-Practice-Apply” approach in our classes. This means that we teach the skills through outside reading, sample speeches from past students, and lecture over the topic. Then the student practices the skill by preparing a speech of the type that was taught. (During the practice stage, the student will give his prepared speech one time to a small group. He will receive feedback from parents and other students, then he will go home and apply what he has learned to improve his speech. (This is one aspect of the apply part of the TPA approach; the real apply step comes when he competes, speaks at the nursing home or local support group, or shares his testimony at church!) He will come back and give his speech again to the group with the improvements made.
Ray or one of our college helpers will lecture about debate. Each week, we try to give them little doses of what debate is all about rather than overwhelming them with too much all at one time. We utilize many teaching methods for debate, such as lecture over the outside reading they were assigned, mock debates, passing out sample evidence and reviewing the components of a piece of evidence, passing out sample plans and reviewing the parts of a plan, going over the speaker’s positions and roles in the debate, having someone give a first affirmative speech and as a group determining some arguments you could make against this plan, and more. We do a lot of interaction and class participation; we also use games and activities for teaching speech skills.
We assign homework, usually something as follows (about three hours worth of homework per week): prepare a devotional (as it is each student’s turn), prepare the new speech type, improve last week’s speech, read about speech in book, read about debate in book, look up five pieces of evidence online, prepare a one page brief about one of the countries that might be included in this year’s resolution, take sermon notes, and more. Eventually, they will be writing debate plans, and, very soon, debating in class with experienced debaters. (We bring in former debaters for this.)

Important Tips for Speech and Debate Class

We feel that there are several key points that have made the difference between success and failure in our classes. Keep these points in mind as you prepare for your class:

Note taking is one of the most vital components for good speaking, debating, and writing.
We teach various note taking skills for the different types of speeches, and we also expect students to take notes each week on a sermon. Home schooled students often do not have good note taking skills as they are not expected to practice this skill in the home. We emphasize the fact that note taking is for the student; thus, he should be able to use his notes to write from or speak from at any given time. Our students know that Mr. Reish could call on them anytime to give a “mini sermon” from their sermon notes. The purpose of taking notes is to be able to use them!
Research is a vital tool for good debating.
We list web sites in our book in which they can find evidence. The NCFCA web site (www.ncfca.org) gives sites to look into. There are books published each year with evidence in them already; the sources of these pieces of evidence will give the students further links to look into. We start the students researching from the very first week. We assign certain countries for them to find information about. They either come back with a written brief about that country or a speech about it. Sharing knowledge that the students acquire through research makes the research even more valuable. Evaluating pieces of evidence in class early on teaches the students what to look for in evidence---credible sources, format of evidence, importance of dates, etc.
Have students speak immediately about topics they already know.
Students should begin speaking immediately about things they know. During the first class, students are surprised to find that they will speak two to four times each! It does no good to prolong the speaking assignments “until they get better at it.” The only way to dispel fears of speaking is to speak. We start our students out speaking the first week about themselves for thirty seconds, their summer for one to three minutes, and some other personal topic (like favorite book or favorite subject). By speaking about something they know, their fears are lessened. We briefly teach the type of speech they will be giving (introduction speech, personal speech, etc.), then the students speak!
Break up into small groups within the room for students to speak.
We have our students speak for the first few weeks at the end of eight-foot tables simultaneously. (All nine eight-foot tables have speakers speaking at the ends of them at the same time.) This sounds confusing, but it is really profitable. For one thing, the student is not expected to speak in a quiet room with many people listening to him. The others in the room kind of drown out his errors! Secondly, it takes less class time to quickly teach about a topic and then have everyone do it at first. It is not intimidating to the students since everyone else is doing it too.
Branch out into rooms for longer, more polished speeches.
After several weeks, students will break up into groups and go to individual rooms to speak and debate. By then, they have prepared the various types of speeches ahead of time (dramatics, persuasive, informative, etc.), and they are more confident to give their speeches. Continue to have students speak often! Each student should have the opportunity to speak at least a couple of times per week to a small group or table of students and parents.
Have students prepare some speeches in class.
During the first couple of weeks, we have the students speak about topics they are familiar with and that do not require research. We give them ten to fifteen minutes during class to prepare, during which we will roam around and help those who are struggling with the outlining or thinking process.
Feedback is one of the most important aspects of speech class.
I cannot stress enough the feedback process of speech class. Every time a student speaks in our class, at least two, but preferably four to six, people give feedback on feedback forms. You may use the feedback forms provided in the Reish book or use the judges’ forms at the NCFCA web site, or design your own feedback forms. Basically, the student needs to know what he did right and what he did wrong. He needs to know ways that he can improve his speech. That is what feedback is all about.
Welcome help from parents.
We take all the help we can get in our classes. The more parents who are there giving feedback, taking small groups to rooms to debate or speak, assisting students with outlining, etc., the better. Students seem to put more stock in the parents’ feedback forms than they do their peers’.
Make your speech class a safe environment.
We enjoy having fun with our students in class and at tournaments. The students know that Mr. and Mrs. Reish will be there to help them with their speeches, improve their skills, and have an enjoyable time in the process. They also know that we, under no circumstances, will tolerate making fun of others’ abilities. From the beginning, make it known that no teasing and put-downs will be tolerated. The only way students can improve their skills is if they feel comfortable in the environment in which they are speaking. No exceptions.

Teaching speech and debate has been rewarding for us. Helping students become “ready to give an answer” has been rewarding for us. Investing in the lives of others always is.