REFLECTION:
For this project we were asked to choose a topic and the topics were about the Middle East, terrorism, and the U.S. policy. Once you choose a topic you would be put into teams of four and this was a mix of students from each class period that Ally had. Once Ally gave us the teams that we were in and the topic that was given to us we had to find evidence and claims that we could bring to the table to have at intelligence 2 style debate that we could perform in front of our class and at all school exhibition. The way that we built background knowledge was by assigning everyone a task to research such as money cost, any troubles in the U.S., anything that could possible go wrong if we allow this to happen. Once everyone had what they needed to make a strong argument they showed it to their teammates and gave feedback they went and refined it. After everyone refined it they all combined their arguments to debate against the other team. Once everyone was good with their arguments they started practicing it and while they were practicing they had to be timed to be sure that they would be able to allow everyone to speak. We did one debate in front of our class and that was for the grade of the project and to also get the feeling of how it was going to be for the debate that we were going to present at the all school exhibition.
The enduring understanding that I will take from this project is that if you are going to debate on a topic you will have to take the time and effort to find the right evidence to help you and your team and also to have good evidence to back your claims up. During this project it also taught me public speaking is a very strong skill that you will need to have in the future because there were a lot of kids that didn’t think that they were going to do well but they ended up proving themselves wrong and supporting their team very well. You also can’t always think what you want to think is right, you need to listen to both parts of the topic or story in order to get the true understanding of it and it could also change your mind. You just need to be open minded and able to listen to everyone. This project has helped me shape the way I think about all of these topics by opening me mind to think deeper and see the clearer picture of each individual topics. It helped me look at both sides equally and not just choosing the side that everyone else was voting for and taking the time to listen and hear to each of everyone’s debates on either you should vote for it or be against it.
The argument skills that I learned during this week and during this project was learning how to flow a debate and using public speaking skills and putting the evidence in the correct way so that we could have strong debate and good evidence. I developed these skills for this project because it was very important to be able to know what you were doing and knowing what your opponents were debating and how you could respond to it correctly. For example for when you flow a debate you write down the key things that everyone says during the debate and that way you wouldn’t bring up anything that has been said and to look back on what your opponents said. Also putting your evidence in the correct way so that it will be nice and professional and so that you won’t lose track of what you are going to debate. During this project I would say that I grew in becoming a persuasive speaker by practicing what I was going to say and trying to talk in a tone that would be convincing to the audience and opponents. I had a little trouble during the debate because I was nervous and I read to directly off the script and certain parts of my debate were hard to follow but I would say that I grew a lot more this year because old me wouldn’t have wanted to speak at all up there but everyone has to get out of their comfort zone and take risk that will be good for you and good for your future.
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