Debate
Debate is an elective open to students in all grades. My goal is to help you become a more critical consumer of argumentation and someone whose insight is not limited to sound bites, but in-depth understanding. We are going to learn about the foundations of argument, techniques for persuasion, and tools for evaluating the advocacy of others. In the mix, we might also throw in some philosophy, ethics, current events,great films, and more.
Speech
Speech is an elective open to students in all grades. There will certainly be more to come later. The primary purpose of Speech class is to provide students will the opportunity to improve their public speaking, organizational, and argumentative skills. In the course of the semester, we will work on speeches that require short-term preparation and those that require careful revision and delivery.
In addition to presenting speeches, students will be expected to be good audience members, paying careful attention to the speeches that other students present and offering constructive feedback.
Word Clues
The textbook for Word Clues is Word Clues the Vocabulary Builder, which was written by a former English teacher at Helena High named Amsel Greene.
“A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one’s vocabulary and the greater one’s awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one’s thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.” –Henry Hazlitt
