# Debate Topics for Students — Run a Live Classroom Debate

Source: https://decka.dev/classroom/politics-and-civics/debate-topics-for-students

Two sides argue a motion while your class votes before the first speech and again after the last. Then every vote walks from where it started to where it ended, and the side that gained more ground moves the room, whether or not it won the vote.

## What it teaches

Students see that a vote is a snapshot and persuasion is a flow: the final margin hides how many minds changed, and in which direction. They trace where the undecideds went, set each side's net gain against the final vote, and explain how a side can lose the vote and still move the room.

## A classroom debate the room votes on twice

This is an audience-vote debate in the style Intelligence Squared made famous: two sides argue a motion, and the audience votes For, Undecided or Against before the first speech and again after the last. Choose two or three speakers per side; they argue rather than vote, so they do not scan the code. Each side opens, rebuts and closes against its own timer on the big screen, with questions from the floor between, and the room's opening vote stands beside the speakers throughout.

After the second vote and one question about what weighed most, the verdict plays in three presses. The second column lands beside the first and marks who won the vote. Then every vote walks from where it started to where it ended: the people who held slide straight across, and each crossing lands with its count. Last, each side's net change prints, in people and in points of those who voted twice, and the side that gained more ground is stamped as having moved the room. A draw, moves that cancel out, a room that drifted to Undecided and a room where nobody moved each get their own words, so the board never claims a result the votes did not produce.

Only people who voted both times are in the flow and its net changes; anyone who voted once is counted under the board, never dropped. The screen shows counts, never names, and each phone shows only its owner's own path. The tally of what weighed most comes last, for the debrief.

Try the screen-and-phone preview with fictional classmates, who vote through the same runtime as the lesson. You run the projector's steps and play one student's phone, casting that student's votes yourself, and you can run it again once it ends. The classmates are illustrative, not observations of a real class.

## Classroom debrief

Which side won the final vote, and which side moved the room? Why can those be different?

How many people changed their minds, and how far did the final margin move? Where did the rest of the movement go?

Where did the undecideds go, and what did the room say weighed most in its final vote?

If the debate was a draw, the moves cancelled out, the room drifted to Undecided or nobody moved at all, what does that say about the speeches, or about the motion?

Which speech do you think changed the most minds? What would you need to measure to know?

## Classroom debate questions, answered

### Do the speakers vote?

No. Pick two or three speakers per side before class. They argue rather than vote, so they do not scan the code; everyone else is the audience and votes twice.

### When does the room learn how the debate is judged?

At the verdict. The room is told only that it votes now and again after the closing speeches, so nobody has a reason to vote tactically the first time. Tell your speakers privately that the side which gains more ground moves the room.

### Can I change the motion?

Yes. The motion is one line of the lesson's wording, shown on every step that names it, and each speech's timer is a setting. Pick one from the topic bank on this page, or any motion your class can argue from its own experience.

### Does anyone see how I voted?

No. The board shows counts only, never names, and each phone shows only its owner's own path. In a small class a lone mover is still a count of one, the same exposure as any tally.

### What if someone votes only once?

Only people who voted both times are in the flow and the net changes. Anyone who voted once is counted under the board rather than left out silently.

### How long does it take?

Six timed speeches and a timed round of questions from the floor, two votes and a final question; the saved default shows under the headline as "About N min", and every timer is a setting you control before you run it.

## Run the lesson

Present the boards in PowerPoint and Decka. Students scan a QR code or open the session link to join from their phone browsers.