Incorporating a Juniors Program at Speech and Debate Club

The next generation of Speech and Debaters are often the younger siblings of the students in your Speech and Debate Club. Why not create a program that starts honing their skills earlier?

Our Junior Debate Class by Nancy Chu (Salt and Light in WI)

(Everyone gets a folder to hold their papers and they get a cool sticker each week.)

12:00 – Opening prayer
12:05 – Verse of the week (relating to speech) and original puppet skit
12:10 – Game (to promote speech skills/quick thinking/teamwork/originality)

  • Would You Rather
  • Junior Taboo
  • Story Cubes
  • Junior Scategories

12:20 – Review game of previous weeks’ lesson with Jeopardy or Kahoot
12:30 – vocabulary crossword
12:40 – critical thinking worksheet
12:50 – Snack and bathroom breaks
1:00-1:30 teaching time, fill in the blank worksheets about introduction to logic and debate
1:30-2:30 Master Debaters

This year we will talk about the constitution too.

If this looks too intense… ADAPT! Salt and Light is the largest Speech nad Debate Club in the state of WI. Their Junior Program started small and grew, grew, GREW! Here are some tips to help you get started…

  1. Keep a list of objectives. What is your goal? To draw people in, to grow your club?
  2. Start simple. This is a program for younger kids, you do not need to make this rocket science for it to do well. It doesn’t need to be a full year program, 6-8 weeks is all you need.
  3. Keep it FUN! Play games (shameful plug for our Games Book), do activities. Make sure that this is not stressful for anyone… including you!

Not all juniors are thrilled to jump into the world of Speech and Debate, start small, start slow, and before you know it they will be involved and having fun.