Recently, my students participated in their sixteenth pop-up debate of the school year.
(Pop-up debates are most thoroughly treated in Chapter 4 of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. You can also get a quick overview of them here. While my goal each school year is to hold a pop-up debate about once every two weeks, for the past several years I've grown lax on this simply because I haven't kept good track of the debates we've held. This year, through a simple clipboard and lined sheet of paper, I've kept track perfectly, and the process of keeping track has made us debate more than ever.)
In today's post, I'd like to share 10 tacks I took toward kindling the five key beliefs in my students for today's pop-up debate. I'm convinced that these beliefs are why the students did such a good job today.
And as you read these, keep in mind: you're not reading this for the sake of taking my unit exactly; you're reading this for principles or connections or mental models that might translate to your work.
1. Begin with knowledge-building
In our current unit, we're studying pressing world issues, and the issue at hand for today's pop-up debate was extreme poverty. (Prompts below.) Throughout the unit, I've been teaching students how I analyze sources for reliability. At first, I would pre-select a set of websites on an issue, walking them through how I concluded that this or that site was a trustworthy source. Two days ago, I shifted this responsibility of website validation to them, asking them to research the following five questions using sources they found on the Internet:
- Where is extreme poverty concentrated in the world?
- What are the causes of extreme poverty?
- What are the effects of extreme poverty?
- What are the most promising solutions to extreme poverty?
- Since extreme poverty (i.e., earning $1-2 per day) is not concentrated in the United States, should Americans do anything about it?
Those latter two are the ones we debated.
Key beliefs being targeted:
Credibility: I'm showing them how to do research.
Value: I'm giving them some choice in their research. Choice is a tool for creating the value belief. I'm also letting them become more knowledgeable on the topic — knowledge-building yields value.
Efficacy: I've scaffolded the research task through the unit.
2. Check understanding prior to the debate
As yesterday's warm-up, I asked students to summarize what they found for their first two research questions. After giving them five minutes to write 100-word summaries, I called on students randomly, building a set of class notes on the white board, probing their thinking to see how deeply they understood the causes they were listing.
This initial check for understanding was very promising, and it made me wonder why I have not always “taught” this final unit topic via teaching the students how to conduct research.
For the rest of yesterday's class period, students worked on the final two questions that we would be debating today.
Key beliefs being targeted:
Value: As they are sharing, I'm complimenting examples of deep thought, giving them a sense of pride in their work. This satisfaction in work well done is a source of value.
Belonging: By randomly calling on students, I'm helping students who don't tend to raise their hands to see themselves as the kind of people who participate verbally in class.
Effort: After we've built our class notes list on the board, I commend the students for their hard work, telling them (honestly) that I've never seen a group of students grasp the complexities of this issue's causes in so little time. In the context of a specific challenge, I'm affirming the specific fruits of yesterday's effort.
3. On the day of the pop-up debate, have all students rehearse via a think-pair-share warm-up
When students walked in, this was their posted writing warm-up:
Today's debate will be in two parts:
- Part I: What are the most promising solutions to extreme poverty?
- Part II: Should Americans and/or the American government care about extreme poverty?
In your notebooks, write 100 words or more (total) in response to each question. Pretend that you are speaking in today's debate as you write. What could you say?
After five minutes of writing, I had them share what they wrote with their partners. Now, even if we get to a spot in the debate where I have to call on a hesitant student, the student will have had a chance to rehearse something twice: once in writing, once with a partner.
Key beliefs being targeted:
Efficacy: Even if they get tongue-tied, students know they can use their warm-up as a “script” for the pop-up debate.
Credibility: I tell students why we do this pre-debate warm-up ritual. This demonstrates to them that I care, and that I know how to help them succeed.
4. Visualize the usefulness of public speaking skills
Before we started the debate, I asked my students to picture a time in their lives when it'll be helpful to speak well. I proposed a few scenarios, quickly:
- Making a case to their parents, a teacher, or the principal
- Sitting in a job interview
- Enjoying a first date
I told them, “Pop-up debates have always been for and about your future. We do this not just because it's fun now, but because it's so helpful to be able to speak well. But I need you to know why this matters to you. That's why I want you to picture it.”
Key beliefs being targeted:
Value: In just a minute or two, I'm guiding students through a value-generation exercise. This is the same kind of thing that happens with Chris Hulleman's Build Connections exercises.
Credibility: I'm framing pop-up debates as evidence that I care about my students and their long-term good.
5. Give data-based praise re: hard work
Students are used to being over-praised for their work, and Carol Dweck has written well about how vague praise for effort ends up demotivating youngsters rather than motivating them. (Here's a nice piece in The Atlantic: “How Praise Became a Consolation Prize.”)
The point isn't to stop praising students — it's to think of giving praise as a kind of argumentation. When you praise a class or a student, you want to demonstrate, warmly but rationally, that the praise you're giving is merited.
Since today's debate was near the end of the school year, I asked my students, “How many pop-up debates do you think you've done this year?”
They were audibly surprised when I told them sixteen. You could feel the pride rise in the room — the good kind of pride, the Wooden-esque “satisfaction” that comes with pushing yourself and doing hard things.
Keeping track of things like pop-up debates doesn't have to be hard. I keep a clipboard dedicated to it — I just write down the debates we hold, the target skill for each debate, and any lessons that I learned as a teacher from the debate.
Key beliefs being targeted:
Effort: Data-based praised builds the effort belief.
Credibility: Data-based praise demonstrates to students my dedication to the work and to them. It's one of those things that doesn't take a ton of work from me but looks like it does.
6. Reinforce the idea that their growth is up to them
“At the start of the school year, there were specific things I could teach you all to help you improve at pop-up debates. For example, I've shown you Paraphrase Plus and Erik Palmer's PVLEGS. But by this time in the year, there's not much new I can teach you. Now, it's up to you to push yourself as an arguer and a speaker. You know where you can improve. You know what it feels like to really try at something, and what it feels like to put in the minimum possible effort.
So before you pop-up today, remember that it's up to you. Push yourself. Grow.”
Key beliefs being targeted:
Value: Young people are especially appreciative of autonomy. This is a simple mind shift for them. I'm trying to help them see the autonomy hidden in plain view, every day in every class.
Effort: I'm exalting the role of intentional effort in skill development.
Efficacy: I'm subtly defining success here as growth versus perfection.
7. Interrupt periodically with modeling or feedback
During the debate, I think of myself as the coach. I don't want to interrupt so much that there's no flow, but I also don't want to let the argument get stuck like a broken record. If I see us getting stuck in one little corner of the playground, I'll come in and model an argument that sets to rest that little corner of the argument. If they want to poke holes in my argument, I welcome it, but then I move us on away from that sub-topic.
Additionally, at this point in the year there's enough trust and confidence in the room that I can call out specific strengths and weaknesses that I see in student speaking work.
Key beliefs being targeted:
Credibility: When I participate in arguments, I show them that I know how to do this, too. It's important here to not appear like a know-it-all or untouchable — this is why I welcome their responses to my arguments.
Belonging: When I point out strengths and weakness in all kinds of students, I'm working to make it clear that no one in the room has “arrived” as a speaker — including me — nor is anyone a zero. We're all the kind of people who work at getting better at this stuff.
8. Track the argument onscreen
(I explain tracking in this post.)
In today's debate, I didn't require students to track on their own papers, but sometimes I do.
Key beliefs being targeted:
Value: When we track each person's contribution to the argument, we demonstrate that there are no “throwaway” speeches. I also think there's something about note-taking that says to students, “Okay. This is important.”
9. Let them choose which question(s) to respond to
This is the first year where I've built pop-up debates on a set of questions rather than a single one.
The format today was that every student needed to participate at least one time in response to at least one of the prompts, and they were able to participate a maximum of two times in response to one or both prompts.
(For more on building good argumentative prompts, see this post.)
Key beliefs being targeted:
Value: Choice is a key means for affecting the value belief.
10. Save space for a post-game analysis
With the final three minutes of class, I stopped the debate and gave some quick glows and grows. I used our notes from the argument to guide my commentary. (See #8 above.) My key goals in post-game analysis are to:
1) Take advantage of the power of fast feedback, and
2) Do some final belief cultivation.
This sounded like:
“This is among the best I've ever seen a class do with a pop-up debate. In terms of both speaking and listening, you performed exceptionally well as a group. With that said, here are the arguments I thought you left unexplored.”
Key beliefs being targeted:
Efficacy: There's no better time to build efficacy than at the moment of success.
Credibility: Giving expert feedback on whole class debate performance demonstrates to students that I know what I'm talking about and that I have what it takes to help them improve as pop-up debaters.
Phew! I hope that helps.
Many of the “moves” above are quick, and none of them require heavy pre-planning. All that I've done is studied and practiced six things, again and again, for years. I hope this extensive post helps to show some of what happens beneath the surface of a pop-up debate.
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