For our speech and debate classes, the students follow a specialized curriculum meant to aid them in their academic and social pursuits. The students learn about numerous methods to relieve social anxiety, perfect public speaking skills, and practice their argumentation technique.
Students are also introduced to preliminary forms of public forum debate, which includes partner-based speeches and periods of cross examination where debaters are required to think critically about given topics/policies. They also learn how to format and contextualize evidence, and how to effectually introduce sources into debate rounds.
Moreover, students also engage in full-sized practice debates with two crossfires, constructive speeches, rebuttal speeches, and summary speeches. Non-debating students are instructed to actively judge and critique the debates, and are expected to give a decision at the end of the rounds.
A large part of the program subsists on reworking and peer-editing speeches to perfection. For homework, students are often instructed to rewrite and perform their speeches to include new techniques learned in class. For debating students, they are told to write out a list of things that could have been improved with their debate rounds. For student judges, they are expected to write out why they voted for a specific team, and list how they plan to improve their own speeches.