Last Thursday, the Year 7 MISA debating team attended the Year 7 MISA Debating Workshop. We travelled to Broughton Anglican College in the minibus and participated in the day with 10 other schools from the Macarthur region. We learned about the three Ms: MATTER, METHOD, and MANNER. Matter being our arguments, manner being our presentation skills, and method being the rules of debating. 

We also had the opportunity to participate in a practice debate where we were put into 2 teams with 4 debaters each: Team A and Team B. Team A was Affirmative and Team B was Negative. Our topic was “That McDonald's should be banned”. We had 1 hour to plan out our ideas, model, team lines and write our speeches. We weren't allowed to use our laptops and worked as groups to come up with ideas that we could use in our debates, like pre-rebuttals. To end our day off, we were very lucky to have the senior debates put on a debate for us. The given topic was “Australia should become a republic in the next decade.” Before the debate took place, we were told to adjudicate their debate. We had to judge them on their manner, matter, and method (3 Ms). In the end, the affirmative team won. 

The workshop taught us that it is important to improvise and think critically on the spot. We learnt about the 3 M’s and how useful they are when debating and practiced our public speaking skills. We are all extremely lucky to be allowed to go to the MISA Year 7 Debating Workshop and learn all there is to know about debating in time for our competition next Semester.

Written by the Year 7 MISA Debating Team (Zoe Garvin, Sofia Berbis, Maverick Kelly, Maddison Holliday, Giuliana Moussally, Isabella Papalia, Claire Pasquel and Monique Pasquel)