As part of the festival, Year 7 scientists have been looking at how we could debate topics and persuade people to vote for some of our favourite things in life. One key skill in Science is to use evidence and facts to present arguments whilst also looking out for bias and opinions.
The first step was to listen to some podcasts from the ‘Smash Boom Best’ debate show. This is a debate show for kids and families from the makers of the award-winning podcast, ‘Brains On’!
Every episode takes two cool things, smashes them together and lets you decide which is best. What do you prefer – cats or dogs? Chocolate or crisps? Unicorns or mermaids?
Our debaters use facts and passion to make their case and teaches listeners how to defend their own opinions along the way.
Visit https://www.smashboom.org/episodes to hear some of the episodes yourself.
Then, we had to decide on the topics we wanted to research and smash together in our debate show. There were some interesting choices made by our students. What did your daughter choose to debate? Once they had decided on their topic they then had time to research and prepare for their debates.
Each debate show was made up of 3 rounds. They first had to make a ‘declaration of greatness’, where each topic made one persuasive and catchy statement to convince everyone their topic was the best. This was then followed by the ‘Micro-round’, where each side had 1 minute to shower the listeners with facts about their topic. The final task was called the ‘final six’, where they had to summarise their topic in 6 statements.
After each section of the debate, the listeners voted and then a tally was counted. In the event of a tie, each group had prepared their ‘sudden death’ statement. Overall winners were then announced.
Do you know what topic your daughter represented? Did your daughter win her debate? Why not ask them about the facts they gathered? Do you agree with their choice?
After the debates and votes were in, every student then created a newsletter article about their experience. Here are some examples on the next page:
Mrs Honeyman, Curriculum Leader for Science