Divide the students into small groups, and give each pair of groups a ‘neutral’ statement (e.g. ‘London is a big city’, or ‘Birds can fly’). Ask one team in each pair to present the statement to the group so it sounds good (‘London is a big, multicultural, thriving city’), and the other to present it so it sounds bad (‘London is a big, dangerous, noisy city’). 5) Stranded on a Desert Island Get the students to form a seated circle. There should be one fewer seat than the number of participants. Standing in the middle, give a statement, starting ‘Cross the circle if…’ that students can either agree or disagree with. As the rules are being learnt, start with simple verifiable facts such as ‘… if you have brown hair’ or ‘… if your name starts with a letter in the first half of the alphabet’. Have students form small groups. Give each student an object (e.g. a pen, a pair of sunglasses, a phone charger). Within the small groups, students should convince others that they should ‘buy’ their object. Round 2 – Each proposal may be best at something, but this doesn’t yet allow us to choose which is best overall.

The game should then proceed around the circle until all the students have had a turn. This is one of the best debating games for beginners. 2) Cross the Circle if… In this round, the advocacy groups will need to argue that their policy should be selected by the government. They will have to argue not only that they are better than the others at something, but also explain why that means that overall, they are best choice for spending. For example, someone defending ‘more nurses’ might suggest that ‘saving more lives’ is more important than ‘boosting the economy most’. When each group has a winner, you can have a further round in front of the class to find an overall winning object. 8) Balloon Debate From our public speaking competitions to our in-school workshops like Discover Your Voice , we know the importance of oracy in the classroom. If you’re teaching students debating, you probably need to find ways to engage them before diving in. Here’s a list of tried-and-tested debating games that our facilitators and mentors use in primary and secondary school classrooms to get students thinking. All the best debating games for students 1) If I Ruled the World While they don’t need to compare with every other proposal, they should be comparative with at least some. You may wish to begin by making a mind-map of possible ‘trump’ categories on the board.Round 1 – In this round, each group will write and deliver a short speech (no longer than one minute) about why their proposed spending is best within a certain category. So, for example, those advocating ‘spending on more nurses’ might want to argue that their proposal would ‘save most lives’; students arguing for ‘providing increased city centre parking’ might claim that their proposal would ‘boost the economy most’. Set the scene: all these people are in a balloon, but it is leaking. To save themselves, they will have to throw someone overboard! One-off or regular donations are vital to our work, helping us ensure that young people everywhere have the oracy skills they need to thrive

Each student will give a 30-second explanation of why their character should be allowed to stay in the balloon, using a point and an explanation. After these arguments, the rest of the students should vote on who should be thrown out of the balloon. This can be repeated until only one person remains in the balloon.Become part of a 5,000+ community which believes that speaking and listening skills are central to personal fulfilment and cultural understanding