At the start of each of my CPD sessions, I ask teachers to bring stories of their successes with them to ‘brag’ about. This time, we wrote them down and pinned them up in the staff room so that everyone could enjoy them and take inspiration from them. Something little to celebrate and keep momentum

I hope you’re off to the butchers soon to pick up some lamb hearts!

😂😂

😂 Fair enough. I’m unconvinced

If you can get your hands on a copy of Gaunt and Stott’s ‘Transform teaching and learning through talk’, there’s a chapter on debate and how it can be promoted in the classroom. Really worth a read

In short, it is a moral imperative that we teach our children to be skilled orators in every sense of the word, and by developing the skills of public and presentational debate, we are better equipping for life in the modern workforce

It also provides a lens through which we can develop a real interest in politics, and so valuable cultural capital

students ‘have’ to think of arguments and counter arguments, and directly practise and develop both physical oracy skills but also social and emotional skills and rhetoric. It promotes structure in presentational talk and more authentic contexts for students to speak in front of audiences

Whilst you compose that, my aims for the club (taken from Gaunt and Stott’s excellent oracy book) are to promote a more presentational and formal form of discussion, with clear and defined roles that forces students to engage with perspectives they might not have previously encountered or considered

Please do

I will do, thank you!