mini – debate

We had our first mini debate last week with Mr Davidson, Myself Abir, Husna, Karima, and Fatima

it was a very intense, exciting thing to experience.

we had our affirmative side which was Fatima, and Husna.
and we had our negative side which was myself, and Karima
and Abir who was our bell person.

The Affirmative and Negative argued over if technology doesn’t lower our education, or if it does.
The Negative team which was me and Karima had great points for pur topics. and so did the affirmative. So i found that it was even and we couldn’t go for more due to the time that we had.

the experience was really good thanks to Mr Davidson.

Our next actual debate we have coming up soon :)))

Birrong Girls High School – From Maysa Elkurdi.

Sefton Vs Birrong Girls

Today, on the 17 of May. Sefton’s year twelve’s debating group was our opponent and they were by far our toughest.

I, Gamy was the first speaker, Daliyah was the second speaker, Banen 3rd, and Yusra as Council.

The topic was politics and the question that both teams came to agree upon was That the Australian government should priorities the return of Australian citizens overseas.

We were affirmative and we thought this was going to be easy but this turned out to be a difficult debate. We ended up losing. But we learnt that we needed to elaborate more on our argument.

Overall, this debate was fun but really difficult

East hills girl High school debate 2021

Today on the 1st of April, Banen, Salsabeel, Yusra and I (Gamy) attended a friendly debate at East Hills Girl high school. This was the first in-person debate in two years and my first EVER professional debating experience in my life. The overall topic of the debate was; education. The question of the debate was if Mindfulness meditation should be compulsory in school?

For my first debate, I was the first speaker, Salsabeel Second, Banen third and Yusra council. We were the affirmative team. We had an hour to prep, plan and create our argument. this was beneficial for me to really get the gits of debating create my palm cards and helping my team members also write their speeches or arguments.

Once time was up, it was time for us to present our case for mindfulness mediation being compulsory in school. I spoke first and was really nervous and stuttered a lot at first but over time I got used to it. We introduced a module that was similar to the Resilience project that our school participates in, sadly we did not add enough detail in our module which let us down. My point was about suicide rates and the effect covid 19 has to had on the wellbeing of students.

As a whole, we need to have a scoop and the educator said that we needed to have different points for our argument because our second speaker spoke on wellbeing and we realised that we never actually introduced new points as well as link our argument to education.

Overall, for my first debate, I had a lot of fun and got over my nerves as soon as I got comfortable. I feel like as a group we have learnt and bonded as a team and are ready to take on Condell park next term.

1/4/2021 – Debate against East Hill Girls High School.

On the 1st April 2021, first speaker Gamy, second speaker Salsabeel, counselor Yusra, and I (third speaker) as well as our coach Mr. Davidson headed to East Hill Girls to compete against the group of debaters there.

The topic for the overall tournament was education, and the debate question was, “Mindfulness meditation should be compulsory in all secondary schools”. We had won the affirmative side of the debate which was we had been aiming for. We had an hour to prepare our ideas, which we had used to enforce the module, collect our ideas, and brainstorm possible rebuttals.

When the debate had begun, it was extremely nerve-wracking as it was the first tournament we had competed in since last year. We had prepared our arguments beforehand and completely nailed them, allowing us time to rebut the opposing teams’ ideas and begin ours.

Each speaker had great knowledge of the topic and was excellent with their argument. It was an extremely close debate which had made it much more exciting.

Overall, the opposing side had presented great ideas which had gained them their win, however, we the affirmative side believe we presented great ideas as well.

When the debate had finished, the adjudicator for the debate had given each group feedback and advice on some discussions or points they missed or had not explained enough.

It was a great experience, filled with many bonding moments shared between as well as the opposing school.

Thank you.

1/04/2021- BGHS debate against EHGTHS

Today, we went to debate against East Hills Girls Technology High School, with the topic revolving around education. Then, we got the topic and our second option was chosen “Mindfulness Meditation should be compulsory in all secondary schools”. We were the affirmative team, Gamy was 1st speaker, I was 2nd speaker, Banen was 3rd speaker and Yusra was our counsel. We had 1 hour to plan our arguments successfully. The time flew by and before you know it, we had to go back and begin the debate.

Gamy started us off strong, it was her first time debating and she did an incredible job. Then we listened to the negative team who also done a good job and gave us lots to write for rebuttals. Next it was my turn. I got up and began reading the rebuttals before starting my argument. As I was reading, I kept making eye contact with the adjudicator, trying to figure out what she was thinking. The debate proceeded very fast and smoothly. It was time to listen to the adjudicator’s general feedback. I was hopeful, we had a 50% chance of winning. Then the adjudicator revealed that it was very close, however, as a result of missing two points, we lost.

It was a very fun debate and I enjoyed debating after so long due to COVID-19. I enjoyed debating against EHGTHS as they were intelligent and presented strong arguments. The adjudicator came and personally gave us feedback. Overall, the adjudicator gave us main feedback to focus on more explicit details of the model we present for future debates. I look forward to our next debate!