Novice scrimmage

If you intend on attending the Novice scrimmage please email staples debate@gmail.com, or post to the Facebook group. Thanks!

But Wait! There's More!

The CDA has some things to prepare for debate, some of which can be considered useful, although we will cover a lot of these things in meetings:
http://ctdebate.org/PDFs/Preparing%20for%20Extemporaneous%20Debate.pdf

If you plan on attending the novice scrimmage and do or do not have a partner, feel free to email
staplesdebate@gmail.com
Remember that registration closes in two weeks.
And..... another rather important bit of information, we ask that you see if your parents can be judges for debates (don't worry, they won't be judging you) seeing as we need one parent judge for every two teams (it's required by the CDA), so have your parents check their schedules.

Thanks for checking the blog!

Some important stuff to know

Before you check if you can attend debates, please know they are always on saturdays, and more importantly, start at 9am (you should be there a before 9 though, or your partner will probably have a heart attack) and end at about 5pm. In short- Long days, fun days, but long nonetheless

Here's a schedule of all of this year's debates (with resolved locations)

Novice Scrimmage

St. Luke's High School

October 13

AITE

November 17

New Canaan High School

December 8 or 15

Joel Barlow High School

January 12

Fairfield Warde High School

February 2 or 9

Greenwich High School

February 9
Snow Makeup Date (still at Greenwich High School)

March 2

Darien High School

March 16 or 23
State Finals

Wilton High School

Remember: Registration for the novice scrimmage closes in two weeks!
Who will you go with?

It takes place at St Luke's school in New Canaan on September 28th 

Dusting off the cobwebs on the blog! 

The blog will have all of the emails archived as well as some helpful debate links posted as I find them, so please check it!

Next meeting Next Wednesday 

September 28; tentative Bertucci's dinner

September 29; novice scrimmage

October 13: first CDA debate

October 30: bake sale

We are looking for a new TA this year, so if you have any suggestions, please speak up or to the teacher. We are starting recruiting, so please tell others about the team, since it is important to get new debaters in for the novice scrimmage.

CDA Debate Results Feb. 4

The February 4th debate was Staples' smallest debate so far this year, but successful none the less.  Sage Vouse and Ken Asada went 3-0 and were the 5th place novice team at the entire tournament!  In the varsity division, Ryan and Mark went 2-1.  The topic was Resolved: The UN should accept Palestine as a member state.  Overall results can be found here.

New Year, New Debates!

Hi everyone, Happy New Years!

I hope everyone had a nice break and is ready to jump right back into things when we get back, cause we sure have a lot going on.

1) Bake Sale Jan 4th!  On the day of our first meeting of the New Year we will be having a bakesale.  If you could bring something in - home made or store bought - on that day it would be groovy.  The money we make will be used to pay our CDA dues for the rest of the year.

2) The Rotary Speech Contest will also be taking place on Jan 4th.  If you signed up to do the contest, it will take place during lunch (period 6) in the library.  You will be excused from your period 6 class.

Remember, the purpose of the speech is to choose a topic or issue that is important to you and analyze whether or not it is ethical by using these four questions:

Is it the truth?

Is it fair to all concerned?

Will it build goodwill and better friendships?

Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

If you'd like, you can take a look at a judge's scoring sheet and some other explanations here.

Here's an example of a speech on youtube. Notice how he uses the questions to guide him through his rhetoric, rather than forcing the questions onto a predestined framework.  Flow with the questions, you don't have to restrict yourself to a cutout of each question one at a time.  If you're still confused, feel free to send me an email or shoot me a facebook message, or explore youtube.  There are a bunch of speeches up there.

3) CDA Jan 7th.  So far I have 3 teams signed up. Same as usual.  This one will be at King or Fairfield Warde, whichever is closer.  The deadline for signing up is Monday Jan 2nd.

4) The Harvard Invitational is happening Feb 18-20.  The website for that is here.  We will be competing in the Public Forum section of the tournament because that is closest to what we are used to.  The registration deadline for that tournament is Jan 28, but it always fills up early.  If you are interested, talk to me or Ryan and we will work out the details.

Thanks for reading all of that!  Lets get ready for a whole new year of debate.

Mark and Ryan