Australia-Asia debating/Teaching debating/Introduction to Persuasion (8-16 years)

This is the introductory lesson, and is likely one of the first lessons you will hold where you will introduce debating to your group. Debating is about persuasion, and the art of persuasion is at the crux of what debating is about. It is therefore wise to spend this lesson introducing your students to persuasion and persuasive techniques.

Ask your students the following questions about persuasion and record their responses on a whiteboard/electronic document - Give prompts to steer students in the right direction if they appear to be stuck, but still leave them to complete the thinking for themselves.
 * What is persuasion? Students will most likely not give a definition up front but rather will list elements of persuasion. This is fine, just write their ideas on the whiteboard and you can help them with a cohesive definition once this is done.
 * Who is persuasive? Responses to this question will probably include politicians, celebrities and maybe school staff. Ask students why they think the people they have named are persuasive.
 * How does one be persuasive? Students should list techniques that one can use to be persuasive, usually techniques that have been taught to them in class.

After this activity is done, present a fourth question to students but answer it yourself - How does one be persuasive in debating? Go through the following points with your students -
 * Debating is where two teams consisting of three speakers present arguments over a set topic.
 * The topics are about social issues and are worded in a certain viewpoint.
 * One team, the affirmative team, argues for the viewpoint the topic is worded in, and the other team, the negative team, argues against the viewpoint the topic is worded in.
 * The goal of each debate is to convince the adjudicator (the person judging the debate) that your team's side is correct.
 * You do this through using arguments and persuasive techniques.

Take care not to overload students with details about how debating works in the first session. In teaching, it is often tempting to present large chunks of theory content to students in the one lesson as a means of saving time, but it is very hard for students to retain content this way and they will likely become disengaged.

Next lesson's focus will be on teaching students basic debating structure, whilst continuing the link with being persuasive.