A Great Debate October 20, 2007

I am lucky enought to say that I had a great ending to my first full week of teaching.  As I stated earlier, my topic for the week is Imperialism.  I have warmed up to the topic, on that I didn’t think would be much fun.  I thought it was one of those units I would want to whip through to get to the WWI.  Suprisingly enought it has went great mostly due to the culmination activity on Friday.  On Thursday we went and researched for a Pro/Anti-Imperialism debate.  I wasn’t sure about using a debate activity because the students in my U.S. History classes are majority sophomores and I didn’t know how well they would be able to stay on task and really create a solid argument. 

 I was pleased to find out I underestimated their ability to get passionate about a topic as bland as Imperialism.  They did a wonderful job with the debate.  I had students getting pretty fired up at each other (that was not the goal, but at least they were getting into the debate).  After a little bit of handholding by me at the beginning the students settled in and started adding detail and examples to their points.  I also made it worth enought points that every student felt as if they had to participate (they had to make a point to get any of their participation points).  I truly enjoyed watching them learn as they were completeing this activity.  I was able to sit on the side and let the students take control of the class and idealy I think this is what should happen (as long as a significant amount of learning is still occuring).  I had all I could do to not chime in and agree with points or sometimes elaborate on them.  I didn’t want to though, I wanted it to be theirs.  Also, there is a response paper they must turn in by Monday, but as I observed I was many students doing an excellent job taking notes.  This was their whole paper was basically wrote for them.  They have all the research they need and only need to fill in the holes.  It should be a great assignment to get some of the students back on track.

Overall, I was very pleased and I wanted to find out if the students felt the same way about the activity.  I allowed some time at the end for me to ask for some feedback.  The student feedback was also overwhelmingly positive.  They really enjoyed the activity no matter which team they were on.  They thought that this made the topic more real to them and they were able to use real life examples with Iraq to describe what they were trying to say (yes there were both positive and negative examples involving Iraq).  I thought the connections they mad took the conversation to a much deeper level and I wasn’t sure they were going to be able to go there with the debate.  The students did ask if they could have more than one day to research and prepare.  Many felt their arguments would have been even stronger had they known what to expect and known more about their topic.  I thought this was a good suggestion and if I use a debate again I will definatly take it into consideration.

I was very impressed with this activity and my students went above and beyond with this lesson.  I thought it was a great ending for them and the paper will really help them pull it all together.  I am looking forward to reading their responses.