We began this project by watching the movie The Great Debaters, this movie was a good way for us to get an easy idea of how a debate would happen and how much work it takes to prove your point in competitive debates. The idea of a debate project interested me a lot when I first heard about it because I knew that past PLP exhibitions also included debates and knowing that this would be in front of a live audience right there in that moment I felt fear of getting up on stage and not knowing my stuff and getting humiliated on stage, but I was able to use that worry towards my work since I knew that I was able to prevent that. Since I had never done a formal debate before I didn’t even really know most of the tactics used in a debate or forms of arguments within one, I began to take my work home and get extra help from my dad to make sure I was completing the criteria correctly. 

We were put into groups of 6 and got an idea of how the debate was going to be matched and set up. We then learn our 5 topics that we would have to argue for either the affirmative side or the negative side, this was a bit of a challenge for me since I had lots of trouble keeping track of so many different topics but our group was able to share the workload by creating a shared craft document that we can all edit, once this was put into place our research was easier to manage and easier to understand. While researching these topics I learnt more about how there can be so many different understandings of these ideas since a few of these topics are natural argument starters there were also a few where you really hoped for the affirmative or the negative side because it was an easier argument to agree with than the other.

While researching I started to pick up on more key ideas that would persuade arguments in a general form, some of these ideas were universal points that could be applied to a number of these topics. I am happy with how this project ended (not just because we got first place in the exhibition competition) this project helped me gain a new skill to think on my feet and try to use my own techniques and advantages in any sort of debate. I was glad that I could connect some of my research to other real life examples or just connect them to an ethical question. 

I am glad to have done this project earlier in the year since it’s usually a much more exciting way to prove your learning since we had to present in the winter exhibition, from the first day I heard we were working in debate I was excited for the actual competition since putting everything on stage raises the stakes so ai wanted to be as prepared as possible and I think that I reached that goal because my biggest fear of showing up unprepared didn’t happen I feel satisfied with what I learned and achieved.