Pop-Up Debates as Comprehension Improvement? Apparently, Yes!

Last year, I realized at the end of first semester that I had forgotten one of my favorite instructional tools: pop-up debates.

Believe it or not, this happens often to me. At this point, I've written about a LOT of different teaching strategies. And even though they're situated in some intentionally simple, practical categories — the “six things” from my first book, the Five Key Beliefs from my second one — I find I can only keep a handful of practices in active use at any one time.

In other words, if you ever feel overwhelmed reading my books and asking yourself, “How does he do all of this in his classroom?” you're probably picturing something that just isn't real. Like anyone, I possess only so much attentional power and only so much time in my lessons and units. Teaching is tinkering, and any tinkerer knows that you've only got so many hands with which to tinker.

But with all that said, when I realized I had been neglecting pop-up debates, I decided to focus on them during Semester 2 and see what happened.

Here is what I did

First of all, we ended up having ten debates, which I kept track of in a corner of my whiteboard. These were the prompts:

1. What was the most dastardly example of state expansion in the 1800s?
2. What was the most messed up example of economic imperialism in the 1800s?
3. What was the most important underlying cause for WWI?
4. Who wanted what during the interwar years and why was that more important than anyone else's?
   • This is a weird one. I assigned small groups a historical group that wanted something during the years between WWI and WWII (e.g., Zionists, the Chinese Communist Party, the Indian National Congress, “the average German citizen”, etc.). Then, when they stood up in the pop-up debate, they could either explain something their group wanted or (much more fun) explain why what their group wanted was more important than what another group wanted.
5. World War II was all about ________________.
   • What goes in the blank and why?
6. If you're going to tell an accurate story of WWII, you can't leave out __________________.
7. What was the most important development, event, person, or concept in Topic 8.2?
8. What was the most important point in Topic 8.3?
9. What should textbooks emphasize about the USSR?
10. What was the most important in Topics 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3?

So as you can see, there was plenty of repetition in how I made these prompts. Pop-up debate #4 was kind of clever and complex, but otherwise, not so much.

Here is what I discovered

Basically, bringing pop-up debates back to the fore blew me away. It's just such an effective means through which to aid student growth, teach content and life skills, and create the conditions in which the Five Key Beliefs can grow.

At the end of the year when I asked my students for practices they recommend I use again next year, I was surprised by how many mentioned pop-up debates, specifically for the way in which pop-up debates advanced their understanding of course material.

This is how Chase put it: “Pop-up debates were easily the best thing to help me understand a topic.”

This was a new use case to me. Pop-up debates as aids to deeper comprehension of course material. Why do they work like this?

I have a couple theories:

• When there's a pop-up debate happening, students are thinking a LOT about the material at hand. They want to make the debate fun, which means clashing well with their peers. They want to give a good speech that meets their personal definition of “good.” And so this motivation leads to lots of thinking, which can often lead to solidified understanding.
• Just the awareness that another pop-up debate was coming soon increased my students' Value* of the material, and so they worked harder to understand it on a daily basis because they knew they would use it in this public, fun way rather than just on a test.

So, to make a long story short: if pop-up debates have fallen by the wayside for you, or if you've never heard of them, maybe give them a try. It's simple to start:

• First, make sure you've used the Share portion of regular Think-Pair-Shares to call on each of your students for a few weeks in a row. Be strict with yourself here — keep track of who has spoken for the whole class to hear. You want this to be 100%.
• After a few weeks of this, modify Think-Pair-Share into Think-Pair-Pop-Up-Debate. When introducing the pop-up debate, just tell them the rules are simple:
  • Everyone speaks at least 1x.
  • No one speaks more than 2x unless you, the teacher, open the floor.
  • To speak, simply stand up.
  • If there's a lull in the debate, you (the teacher) will call on students who haven't gone yet.
  • All they need to do is answer the prompt; they can read off their papers if they want to.

That's really it.

After the debate, be sure to ask them two things:

1. How it went — what did the class do well, what did the class do poorly? This will generate what you're going to teach them (briefly) to do better the next time around.
2. Who felt at least 1% nervous to stand up and speak? This will help to normalize the struggle (Strategy 10 in my new book) and will greatly aid your anxious speakers. (Trust me, you have a lot of them because most people are anxious about public speaking, including me.)

I'd love to hear how it goes! Just email me.

Best,

DSJR

*Value is one of the Five Key Beliefs that I unpack in my new book. In the pyramid graphic below, you can see that it's just above Credibility in terms of how foundational it is for all student motivation.