During this two week long debate camp students will learn the basics of speech and debate through a hands on approach where kids participate everyday right from the start. At the end of the two weeks students will participate in a mini-tournament and leave with increased self-confidence and the skills they need to better express themselves in the world. No prior debate experience is required to participate but students should come ready and excited to jump into learning right away. Each class will include both a short lecture followed by an activity to help students learn the skill being taught during the lecture portion of class. Students will learn how to form arguments, listen to their opponents, develop critical thinking skills, and discern the difference between reliable and unreliable sources for evidence. This will allow students to learn to speak to a diversity of different people in order to learn how to adapt their arguments to the audience they're speaking to. Students will also learn how to fairly listen to and judge others without bias. By the end of the two weeks students will have increased their public speaking skills, logical reasoning, as well as their ability to listen to and understand others. A breakdown of the course is as follows...

Week One
Monday: Introductions and Mini-Debates
Tuesday: Learning to Take Notes and Mini-Debates 2
Wednesday: Learning to Judge, Ask Questions, and Speech Redos
Thursday: Learning Audience Adaptation and Debate Games
Friday: Conclusion of Thursday's Debate Games

Week Two
Monday: Learning to Give Impact Analysis and Debate Games
Tuesday: Learning the Impact Turn and Conclusion to Monday's Debate Games
Wednesday: Leaning How to Answer Questions, Listen, and Speech Redos
Thursday: Mini-Tournament, Day One
Friday: Mini-Tournament, Day Two

Once classes have more than six students we add a second instructor to always maintain at least a 1:6 ratio. Larger class sizes allow us to even better group students by age and skill, give students the ability to interact with a larger diversity of peers, as well as receive feedback from multiple people while still forming a close relationship with our instructors.