As I mentioned in my last post, we have spent the last few months studying Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. We focused mainly on the concepts and symbolism in the novel, and expanded on this knowledge by writing paragraphs once a week. However, there were a few other things intertwined with this unit. For one, we also briefly studied the Canadian government, and how it works. This worked well with Lord of the Flies since it is a very political novel. We were also told from early on that this unit would culminate in a debate, which would happen during the spring exhibition. I was quite happy about this since I feel comfortable debating and public speaking.
Our first assignment of the unit was obviously inspired by Lord of the Flies. The teachers left the room and told us we had about 20 minutes to form teams. These teams would be our groups for the rest of the unit. I ended up on a team with Tom, Chris, Alanah, and Teva, called team Tactical. Once the teachers returned, they told us that we would be part of a competition against the other teams. Different tasks throughout the unit would gain or lose us points:
Points could also be gained by things like winning the practice debates that we had in class. At first, teams worked hard to gain points and everyone was focused on winning the competition. But as time went on, the teams began to lose the desire to win the competition and follow the rules. As the unit progressed, I started to make a connection between the points system and Lord of the Flies. In Lord of the Flies, the boys set out rules quickly after crashing on an island. These rules included things like only letting the person who holds “the conch” speak, and never letting the signal fire out. At first, the boys are quite adamant about following these rules. But like our class, as time wore on, they lost focus on the rules and guidelines. So the exact same thing that happened in Lord of the Flies seemed to happen to our class as well.
We did a lot to prepare for the debates that would happen at the exhibition. Every class we would add ideas to posters that explored different concepts. These concepts were:
Power and Authority
Humanity and Inhumanity
Violence and Destruction
Human nature
Civilization and Savagery
Innocence and Evil
Individualism and Community
Insert photo of posters
We also wrote a paragraph about these concepts once a week. We also had our new teacher, Ms Maxwell, helping us with our debating skills.
Eventually, we were put into our teams for the debate. I was on a team with Jackson and Brianna, which was good because I thought the three of us worked well together. We did well in all the practice debates so I felt confident heading into the exhibition. We had prepared well with charts like this:
On the night of the debate setup was quick so my team had a lot of time to practice. Finally, it was time for the tournament to begin. The winners would be decided by a 3 way vote; two votes from judges and one vote from the audience. My team, ended up having to go first, so I was a little nervous. However, I thought my team did exceptionally well. We made good points and countered the other team’s points effectively. Once the round ended, the audience voted almost unanimously for us as the winners. However, both judges voted against us, so we ended up moving into the losers’ bracket. Afterwards, we found out that the judges had accidentally given some of our points to the other team, however I wasn’t too upset because I thought the other team had done a great job. I also knew that the judges had a very hard job and that they probably didn’t know what to expect until the night of the debates, so I thought they did a great job.
Our second round in the losers’ bracket lasted a minute and was decided by audience vote. We won almost unanimously, so we felt good about that. Eventually, the debate was won by Chris, Michael, and Maria which I thought was a good decision since they had done a great job.
If I had to do anything differently, I would have prepared a little differently. I would have focused less on Lord of the Flies, and more on how the concepts could be applied in the World today. I think that would have helped us come up with more unique points. But other than that, I thought my team did an exceptional job.
To conclude, I think that this debate was a great way to wrap up the year, since it drew upon all our skills; critical thinking, public speaking, thinking on the spot, etc. I had a lot of fun debating and would be happy to do another debate in the future.