For elementary students, repetition in debate topics can be rather irritating. There’s no National Curriculum obligation for primary schools to teach debating, so how much – if any – is done depends entirely on the school. This Thunk encourages them to explore to what extent dogs – a proxy for all animals, in many ways – have feelings beyond simple ones such as pleasure. Can you count thoughts and, if you can’t, is it because you humanly can’t count them (like stars) or because they’re uncountable (like water)? Password must contain at least 10 alphanumeric (letter or number) characters. Debating can be scary when you are just starting up, and sometimes it’s the smallest things that can help you to become a much better speaker. We share some challenging questions to trigger their thought processes. Want to get your child’s brain working? Important issues can be explored in a non-moralistic and safe way. The connection between toys and children runs deep, but these days, we can end up thinking that a toy is something that is made by someone else, and made to be a toy. Debating exercises can be used for group work and for whole class activities. Debating for Primary Students workshop, you will learn how to build an engaging debating programme differentiated for your students. This topic allows them a peek into another world where good and bad still exist but the lines are not quite so clear. Debates Teacher Training Sessions If you are a primary school teacher who would like your school to take part and receive training on how the Concern Primary Debates works, please contact your local education centre first as they handle as registrations and will advise if your school has secured a place. We teach children to be polite, but for whose sake? Some children seem to have opinions about anything, and don’t hesitate to share them. Home Resources Argument Template for Primary School students. We also have thought-provoking debate topic suggestions that kids will love getting their heads around in our 12 brilliant debate topics for kids article. ‘Having lots of dialogue and discussion with your child, and asking his opinion on a range of topics, will help him develop the skills he needs for debating,’ says Debbie. Through debating, children can broaden their horizons and begin to explore big ethical questions. If parents own their children, can they legitimately sell them? Win a Stomp Rocket® toy bundle worth over £40! Argument text is a written form of debating; most children will write opinion / argument pieces in KS2. Debating also enables structuring and categorizing the flow of thoughts effectively. This topic also throws up the notion of robot consciousness and ‘rights,’ especially in a world where we’ve just seen the first robot gain national citizenship, in Saudi Arabia. Very grateful now to be a subscriber and wanted to say a huge well done to you all as I think it's a great site and resource.'. It … ... Debating SA on Facebook Debating SA YouTube Channel Organization of a child’s thoughts is important to forming a convincing argument and having facts to support those thoughts is paramount. TV and books are full of this view, but maybe the ‘scared girl’ is doing the right things, and the ‘big brave male’ is making things worse. Password must contain at least one uppercase character. Should children be allowed to elect their own teachers? Password must contain at least one uppercase character. Of course, all parents will deny this, so a follow-up question might be, ‘where does the extra love come from?’.