Mock Presidential Debate
Description
The Mock Presidential Debate (MPD) was a semester-long, cross-level, multi-stranded, scaffolded simulated debate that built on different areas of student expertise. On November 2, 2016, Galloway hosted a student-produced and student-presented MPD featuring Team Clinton and Team Trump; each team featured students playing the candidates, while fellow Advanced Placement Comparative Government (Government) students served as research analysts. In the months leading up to the MPD, teams researched their candidates' policy positions and worked with the Senior English students to present their data in rhetorically-focused, persuasive position papers. Students in Advanced Placement Literature (Literature) taught two lessons to the Government students on rhetoric and persuasive writing during the time in which Government students completed their position papers in preparation for the debate. Also, Literature students taught |
the Government classes peer review strategies in order to run two peer review sessions focused on the position papers. Policy Debate students, with the help of theater faculty, coached Government candidate teams on the debate process, non-verbal public speaking strategies, and verbal persuasion devices during numerous iterative practice debates. The Senior English students taught lessons in rhetoric, persuasion, and storyboarding to third graders. Using this knowledge, the third grade classes collaborated with middle and high school filmmaking students to produce intermission commercials to be shown during the debate. Filmmaking students produced a livestream of the event. Theater Tech students managed sound and lighting during the event, and Economics classes produced additional commercial break videos. |
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of the project, learners will be able to:
At the conclusion of the project, learners will be able to:
- Demonstrate effective verbal and nonverbal public speaking strategies for political persuasion.
- Evaluate the complexities, strengths, and weaknesses of the major policy issues facing the 2016 Presidential election.
- Organize and apply relevant rhetorical and persuasive strategies in order to translate information for teaching to various audiences.
Assessment
Learners were assessed on the following content and skills:
Learners were assessed on the following content and skills:
Process
The graphic below outlines the steps of the project process on a calendar timeline from the ideation for the project on July 15 until the debate event on November 2, 2016. Below the graphic is a list of major deadline events occurring during the regular school year. (Note: Lauren is the English teacher, Sam is the Government teacher, Kathy is the Filmmaking teacher, and I am the Debate teacher.)
The graphic below outlines the steps of the project process on a calendar timeline from the ideation for the project on July 15 until the debate event on November 2, 2016. Below the graphic is a list of major deadline events occurring during the regular school year. (Note: Lauren is the English teacher, Sam is the Government teacher, Kathy is the Filmmaking teacher, and I am the Debate teacher.)
The MPD was a highly collaborative endeavor - including over 18% of the total student body in the process and production. The graphics below demonstrate the intersections of the major three groups - Senior English, Government, and Debate classes - with third grade, economics, theater, and filmmaking. Each overlapping area on the diagram indicates groups that collaborated together directly.
This graphic utilizes these same colors from the diagram above to demonstrate specific actions of collaboration between learners. The two different colors of red for English represent the students in Advanced Placement Literature (bright red) and Senior Seminar on Political Theater (dark red).
Artifacts of Learning
During the project, facilitators following the following design process:
During the project, facilitators following the following design process:
- Ask (initial faculty ideation)
- Imagine (initial student ideation)
- Plan (student responsibility ideation and trials)
- Create (iterate, reflect, revise)
- Improve (reiterate, reflect, repeat)
Photos and artifacts from each stage of the process are captured in these five photo slides:
The below video is the professionally produced video from Galloway's Communications Department highlighting the Mock Presidential Debate exhibition as an example of 4D Learning.
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The below video is the student produced video by Kathy Shield's Filmmaking class to livestream the Mock Presidential Debate exhibition to the community.
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Instructional Artifacts
The below items available for download are instructional artifacts utilized by policy debate class learners.
The below items available for download are instructional artifacts utilized by policy debate class learners.
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Reflection
When Sam and Lauren met in July of 2016 to brainstorm ideas for a collaborative project between Comparative Government and 12th-Grade English, their plan was to do a "Reacting to the Past" role playing simulation of the Constitutional Convention. However, as they contemplated what would be truly relevant to the lives of learners, this idea morphed into a mock presidential debate (MPD) and they brought me on to the project to help with the Debate aspects. Sam, Lauren, and I served as the facilitation team for the MPD. Learners began by brainstorming how to be active participants in the election and engage with the world. Government students chose issues that teens could relate to, had interest in, and were practical to them. Issues such as education, immigration, and race were chosen over health care and free trade agreements. Government students chose candidate teams, the debaters, and for which topic they were going to serve as research analysts. Many students were uncomfortable with the fact that they had to advocate for a policy regardless of personal beliefs; this led to many tense and uncomfortable moments in and out of class as they were discussing policy issues. However, they discovered through this process that the other side had beliefs that they could find valid. Government students planned and wrote policy papers explaining their candidate’s positions and exposing weaknesses in the other side’s arguments. The English and Debate students had the challenge of figuring out how to coach the Government students to improve their policy papers and to utilize effective debate techniques. The facilitator team also met with third grade teachers to brainstorm ways to get them involved because of their unit on government. The third grade students chose the cost of higher education and immigration reform to create their commercials. Also, economics students produced infomercials for the debate. |
There were multiple opportunities throughout the process for learners to deliberately reflect and get feedback on their work. English and Government students met several times during lunch sessions to edit and improve policy papers as well as to teach, learn, and review rhetorical strategies. Debate students met with each candidate team on multiple occasions to coach them through iterations of the debate strategies. Participants held dress rehearsals before the final exhibition debate for all of Galloway's Upper Learning division (grades 9-12) and, thanks to the filmmaking class, the debate was livestreamed to the entire community. After daring to advocate for political positions on stage before the entire high school, Debate students and community judges - including a local mayoral candidate - gave feedback to the candidate teams. While the facilitation team was confident in the MPD, upon reflecting on the project, we could do some things differently to potentially improve the opportunities for learning afforded by the experience. English students could have taught a level-appropriate lesson on ad design and persuasion to the Economics students to improve the quality of their infomercials. We also could have given Economics students more specific ideas about the relationship between the infomercials and the debate topics. There could have been better scaffolding between the Debate and Government students during the meeting times. Due to the contentious nature of the election, we could have engaged social and emotional learning strategies more with our learners. Lastly, we could have created a way for the audience to participate during the debate through polls or reflective responses. |