For the past few days I've been busy planning a debate camp with another volunteer and a number of other teachers from all over Thailand. I've met some teachers who work with other Volunteers in other areas, and the planning has been going well, smile. The camp will be next month, hosted by the OBEC, and the attendees will be a couple hundred students from all over Thailand, I think from 5th grade and up.
Debate can be difficult to plan, because coming up with the prompts is a bit of a challenge. We wanted topics that would interest the students and were easily arguable, and it was that part that gave us all some trouble. Here they have a Government and Opposing side, not just pro and con like I remember from High School, and the Government generally takes the pro side of the debate which can lead to the opposition having very few valid arguments. We also didn't want to recycle topics from previous years or debate inflammatory or disrespectful ideas, so we had our work cut out for us! Fortunately, we had a great group of teachers, and working together we were able to come up with the required number of prompts for the camp, which should be oodles of fun!
Debate can be difficult to plan, because coming up with the prompts is a bit of a challenge. We wanted topics that would interest the students and were easily arguable, and it was that part that gave us all some trouble. Here they have a Government and Opposing side, not just pro and con like I remember from High School, and the Government generally takes the pro side of the debate which can lead to the opposition having very few valid arguments. We also didn't want to recycle topics from previous years or debate inflammatory or disrespectful ideas, so we had our work cut out for us! Fortunately, we had a great group of teachers, and working together we were able to come up with the required number of prompts for the camp, which should be oodles of fun!
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