Year 6 Debate

Year 6 had the wonderful opportunity to experience a formal debate; facilitated by colleagues and students from Trafford College's debate club. The topic of the debate was "Should children have been evacuated during World War II?" The morning began with the children being taught about how debates are run, including examples of how debates take place within the House of Commons. The children were exposed to new technical vocabulary such as proposition, seconder and rebuttals. Half of the children began planning their arguments for evacuation whilst the other half of the children planned to argue against evacuation. Alongside their existing knowledge from history lessons, the children used evidence such as news articles, statistics and some real life stories from children who were evacuated during WWII. The lead speaker from each group began by giving their opening statement to the room, followed by the seconder from each group. The floor was then opened for anybody to contribute to the debate. There were some extremely interesting points made. Will, second speaker arguing for evacuation, stated "In response to the right honourable member of the opposition, I don't believe staying in big cities such as London was a good idea. Sadly, 10% of deaths during the Blitz were children. This could have been avoided if they had been evacuated to safer areas." To conclude the debate, all that were present - children and adults - were invited to cast their vote. The result was extremely close, with the for team taking the win by just 1 vote. All in all, a great experience for our year 6 learners, again highlighting the importance of Oracy within our school.