To register: hover over the "REGISTRATION" tab and then choose the location for where you would like to enroll your student. After submitting your registration form, please submit payment within 48 hours to ensure your spot. We encourage students to register for 2 to 3 one-week camp sessions. Thank you.
Online Summer Debate Camp for Advanced and Intermediate Student
The Athens Two-Month Summer Online Debate camp is for advanced and intermediate students. This program will teach students every key competency related to philosophy, policy, and technical debate. Students will learn nearly 70 different topics covering every major philosophy, policy theory, and technical debate concept in debate. In the school year, debate programming is often forced to focus on topic-related preparation so that students can adequately prepare for tournaments. The issue with this is that next-level success in debate requires more than topic-specific content knowledge. The most successful debaters have always been those that have a firm grasp on debate's core pillars: philosophy, public policy, and technical debate theory. When students masters these three pillars they are able to make more advanced frameworks, more nuanced arguments, and most importantly not get intimidated by unfamiliar or complex-sounding argumentation. This program intends to solve this problem by teaching students over 30 different philosophies, dozens of different policy theories, and a dozen different technical debate concepts. Students will leave this camp with a world of knowledge, confidence in the intellectual pillars related to debate, and ready to take their debate argumentation to the next level.
This program will be purely online. Students will receive video lectures and accompany materials to learn the material. They will then complete an online quiz for each and every competency. Students must master each concept to successfully complete the program. Quizzes simply serve as a way to ensure learning and give students a sense of achievement.
The course is self-paced. The course is designed for students to complete it at their leisure over a two-month period. However, more ambitious students are welcome to complete it faster. Alternatively, students with more demanding schedules are welcome to take more time to complete the course. The course will have weekly live interaction with an actual instructor. Students will have the ability to speak with an instructor twice a week to get assistance, ask questions, etc. We are 100% convinced that this online summer debate program is the best way for both advanced and intermediate students to take their debate skills to the next level. Students who enroll in this program are also welcome to compete in the Athens Summer Debate Tournament that will take place on Saturday, August 24th. Students will get the opportunity to apply their newfound knowledge and skills on the Fall Debate topic and get 6 rounds of practical debate experience.
Take a look at this program's curriculum here: http://www.athensdebate.com/online-debate-camp.html
New Topic Accelerated Prep Session for Lincoln Douglas Debate
This one-week camp is designed for students who have taken an Lincoln-Douglas debate class and are looking to get a significant jump start on the fall semester. This session will focus exclusively on preparing students for the fall debate topic. Students will come out of this debate camp with an affirmative case, negative case, blocks against common arguments, cross examination traps, and experience debating the new topic. This camp is highly recommend for students looking to take their debating to the next level in the fall semester.
Students are encouraged to pair this one-week camp with either the “Oxford Debate, Congressional Debate, & Parliamentary Debate” camp, or the “Middle School Beginner Debate” camp, or the “Speech: Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking” camp.
Middle School Beginner Debate
Multiple Speech and Debate Events: Students will explore multiple speech and debate events. These include: Lincoln-Douglas debate, Parliamentary debate, Congressional Debate, Extemporaneous Speaking, Impromptu Speaking, Oratorical Interpretation, and Expository speaking. Starting in the Fall of 2018, students will have the choice to join multiple speech and debate events. This will give students a great introduction to those events.
Technical Debate: Students will spend a quarter of their time mastering the technical aspects of debate. This means a lot of drills to sharpen their skills related to cross-examination, rebuttals, crystallization, flowing, performing weighing analysis, attacking frameworks, and learning how to handle faster debate speeds.
Future Topic Primers: Students will get an overview of all potential topics for the upcoming debate year. This will give them all a jump start on the upcoming debate year so they can spend more time debating and less time working on case development during the school year.
Philosophy: Students will spend a quarter of their time mastering foundational philosophy that is used in debate. Authors include John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, and more! Students will explore topics around morality, ethics, government, justice, objectivism, and more! Complex theories and ideas like this will be taught in a fun and digestible way for students of any middle-school grade to digest.
Speech: Students will spend a significant portion of time becoming powerful orators. Even though strong argumentation and logic are central to debate, speech and effective communication is fundamental. Through an array of drills and activities, students will learn how to balance both logic and oratory.
Games and fun!: Summer should be fun. We intend to learn a lot, but the summer session will also have plenty of time for fun debate related games. We want kids to want to be there and will help cultivate that with occasional games to keep things light but informative.
Students are encouraged to pair this one-week camp with either the “Speech: Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking” camp, or the “Accelerated Prep Session for Lincoln Douglas Debate” camp, or the “Oxford Debate, Congressional Debate, & Parliamentary Debate” camp.
4th/5th Grade Speech and Debate
This camp is for any 4th or 5th grade student looking to learn the art of speech and debate. Students will learn and sharpen the foundational elements of speech and debate. Students will explore multiple speech and debate events. These include: Lincoln-Douglas debate, Oxford style debate, Parliamentary debate, Congressional Debate and Impromptu Speaking. The curriculum is designed to teach students a great deal of material while making sure students have fun and develop an intrinsic joy for speech and debate. Students will also learn foundational philosophy, elements of current events, methods for becoming stronger and more confident public speakers, logical reasoning, and how to engage in civil discourse. Games and fun!: Summer should be fun. We intend to learn a lot, but the summer session will also have plenty of time for fun debate related games. We want kids to want to be there and will help cultivate that with occasional games to keep things light but informative.
Congressional Debate & Parliamentary Debate
Students will learn debate in the Oxford, Congressional, and Parliamentary styles. The Oxford-style debate format involves a debate on a predetermined statement – also called a “motion” – from two opposing perspectives. The two sides (two students per team) either argue “for” or “against” the motion within a formalized structure. Congressional Debate is a mock legislative assembly competition where students draft bills (proposed laws) and resolutions (position statements), which they and their peers later debate and vote to pass into law and then take action on by voting for or against the legislation. Parliamentary debate is a contest of reason, wit and rhetorical skill which simulates debate in a theoretical House of Parliament. Two teams, the Government and the Opposition, of two debaters each, consider a resolution proposed to the House. A different resolution is proposed each round. The debate is moderated by a Speaker of the House, who will also serve as judge for the round. In parliamentary debate, emphasis is placed on quick thinking, logical argumentation and analysis, an command of rhetoric over extensive research or collection of evidence. Accordingly, no recorded evidence or other outside written material may be consulted during the round. Who should enroll: This camp session is ideal for those with prior debate experience. Students who have previously enrolled in debate may enjoy learning these new debate styles. New middle school students are also welcome to enroll.
Students are encouraged to pair this one-week camp with either the “Speech: Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking” camp, or the “Accelerated Prep Session for Lincoln Douglas Debate” camp, or the “Middle School Beginner Debate” camp.
Speech: Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking
Students will spend one-week learning the “speech” side of “speech and debate” by learning various speech events. Speech tends to be an incredibly fun and popular way to learn the art of communication. This camp will focus on Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking.
Impromptu speaking: Impromptu is a public speaking event where students have seven minutes to select a topic, brainstorm their ideas, outline and deliver a speech. The speech is given without notes and uses an introduction, body, and conclusion. The speech can be light-hearted or serious. It can be based upon prompts that range from nursery rhymes, current events, celebrities, organizations, and more.
Humorous Interpretation: Using a play, short story, or other published work, students perform a selection of one or more portions of a piece up to ten minutes in length. Humorous Interpretation is designed to test a student’s comedic skills through script analysis, delivery, timing, and character development. Competitors may portray one or multiple characters. No props or costumes may be used. Performances can also include an introduction written by the student to contextualize the performance and state the title and the author.
Expository speaking: Crafting an original speech, Expository students should describe, clarify, illustrate, or define an object, idea, concept, or process. The speech includes research and is aimed at informing the audience; the goal is to educate, not to advocate. No visual aids are permitted. The time limit is five minutes. The speech is delivered from memory.
Oratorical Interpretation: Oratorical Interpretation, or OI, is an individual event that requires you to find a published speech that was actually delivered in a public forum. This speech event encourages you to understand the relationship of an oration to the times that inspired it. You must analyze and understand the goals and motivation of the original speaker, and interpret the oration with a whole new voice to a whole new audience.
Students are encouraged to pair this one-week camp with either the “Middle School Beginner Debate” camp, or the “Accelerated Prep Session for Lincoln Douglas Debate” camp, or the “Oxford Debate, Congressional Debate, & Parliamentary Debate” camp.
The Athens Two-Month Summer Online Debate camp is for advanced and intermediate students. This program will teach students every key competency related to philosophy, policy, and technical debate. Students will learn nearly 70 different topics covering every major philosophy, policy theory, and technical debate concept in debate. In the school year, debate programming is often forced to focus on topic-related preparation so that students can adequately prepare for tournaments. The issue with this is that next-level success in debate requires more than topic-specific content knowledge. The most successful debaters have always been those that have a firm grasp on debate's core pillars: philosophy, public policy, and technical debate theory. When students masters these three pillars they are able to make more advanced frameworks, more nuanced arguments, and most importantly not get intimidated by unfamiliar or complex-sounding argumentation. This program intends to solve this problem by teaching students over 30 different philosophies, dozens of different policy theories, and a dozen different technical debate concepts. Students will leave this camp with a world of knowledge, confidence in the intellectual pillars related to debate, and ready to take their debate argumentation to the next level.
This program will be purely online. Students will receive video lectures and accompany materials to learn the material. They will then complete an online quiz for each and every competency. Students must master each concept to successfully complete the program. Quizzes simply serve as a way to ensure learning and give students a sense of achievement.
The course is self-paced. The course is designed for students to complete it at their leisure over a two-month period. However, more ambitious students are welcome to complete it faster. Alternatively, students with more demanding schedules are welcome to take more time to complete the course. The course will have weekly live interaction with an actual instructor. Students will have the ability to speak with an instructor twice a week to get assistance, ask questions, etc. We are 100% convinced that this online summer debate program is the best way for both advanced and intermediate students to take their debate skills to the next level. Students who enroll in this program are also welcome to compete in the Athens Summer Debate Tournament that will take place on Saturday, August 24th. Students will get the opportunity to apply their newfound knowledge and skills on the Fall Debate topic and get 6 rounds of practical debate experience.
Take a look at this program's curriculum here: http://www.athensdebate.com/online-debate-camp.html
New Topic Accelerated Prep Session for Lincoln Douglas Debate
This one-week camp is designed for students who have taken an Lincoln-Douglas debate class and are looking to get a significant jump start on the fall semester. This session will focus exclusively on preparing students for the fall debate topic. Students will come out of this debate camp with an affirmative case, negative case, blocks against common arguments, cross examination traps, and experience debating the new topic. This camp is highly recommend for students looking to take their debating to the next level in the fall semester.
Students are encouraged to pair this one-week camp with either the “Oxford Debate, Congressional Debate, & Parliamentary Debate” camp, or the “Middle School Beginner Debate” camp, or the “Speech: Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking” camp.
Middle School Beginner Debate
Multiple Speech and Debate Events: Students will explore multiple speech and debate events. These include: Lincoln-Douglas debate, Parliamentary debate, Congressional Debate, Extemporaneous Speaking, Impromptu Speaking, Oratorical Interpretation, and Expository speaking. Starting in the Fall of 2018, students will have the choice to join multiple speech and debate events. This will give students a great introduction to those events.
Technical Debate: Students will spend a quarter of their time mastering the technical aspects of debate. This means a lot of drills to sharpen their skills related to cross-examination, rebuttals, crystallization, flowing, performing weighing analysis, attacking frameworks, and learning how to handle faster debate speeds.
Future Topic Primers: Students will get an overview of all potential topics for the upcoming debate year. This will give them all a jump start on the upcoming debate year so they can spend more time debating and less time working on case development during the school year.
Philosophy: Students will spend a quarter of their time mastering foundational philosophy that is used in debate. Authors include John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, and more! Students will explore topics around morality, ethics, government, justice, objectivism, and more! Complex theories and ideas like this will be taught in a fun and digestible way for students of any middle-school grade to digest.
Speech: Students will spend a significant portion of time becoming powerful orators. Even though strong argumentation and logic are central to debate, speech and effective communication is fundamental. Through an array of drills and activities, students will learn how to balance both logic and oratory.
Games and fun!: Summer should be fun. We intend to learn a lot, but the summer session will also have plenty of time for fun debate related games. We want kids to want to be there and will help cultivate that with occasional games to keep things light but informative.
Students are encouraged to pair this one-week camp with either the “Speech: Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking” camp, or the “Accelerated Prep Session for Lincoln Douglas Debate” camp, or the “Oxford Debate, Congressional Debate, & Parliamentary Debate” camp.
4th/5th Grade Speech and Debate
This camp is for any 4th or 5th grade student looking to learn the art of speech and debate. Students will learn and sharpen the foundational elements of speech and debate. Students will explore multiple speech and debate events. These include: Lincoln-Douglas debate, Oxford style debate, Parliamentary debate, Congressional Debate and Impromptu Speaking. The curriculum is designed to teach students a great deal of material while making sure students have fun and develop an intrinsic joy for speech and debate. Students will also learn foundational philosophy, elements of current events, methods for becoming stronger and more confident public speakers, logical reasoning, and how to engage in civil discourse. Games and fun!: Summer should be fun. We intend to learn a lot, but the summer session will also have plenty of time for fun debate related games. We want kids to want to be there and will help cultivate that with occasional games to keep things light but informative.
Congressional Debate & Parliamentary Debate
Students will learn debate in the Oxford, Congressional, and Parliamentary styles. The Oxford-style debate format involves a debate on a predetermined statement – also called a “motion” – from two opposing perspectives. The two sides (two students per team) either argue “for” or “against” the motion within a formalized structure. Congressional Debate is a mock legislative assembly competition where students draft bills (proposed laws) and resolutions (position statements), which they and their peers later debate and vote to pass into law and then take action on by voting for or against the legislation. Parliamentary debate is a contest of reason, wit and rhetorical skill which simulates debate in a theoretical House of Parliament. Two teams, the Government and the Opposition, of two debaters each, consider a resolution proposed to the House. A different resolution is proposed each round. The debate is moderated by a Speaker of the House, who will also serve as judge for the round. In parliamentary debate, emphasis is placed on quick thinking, logical argumentation and analysis, an command of rhetoric over extensive research or collection of evidence. Accordingly, no recorded evidence or other outside written material may be consulted during the round. Who should enroll: This camp session is ideal for those with prior debate experience. Students who have previously enrolled in debate may enjoy learning these new debate styles. New middle school students are also welcome to enroll.
Students are encouraged to pair this one-week camp with either the “Speech: Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking” camp, or the “Accelerated Prep Session for Lincoln Douglas Debate” camp, or the “Middle School Beginner Debate” camp.
Speech: Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking
Students will spend one-week learning the “speech” side of “speech and debate” by learning various speech events. Speech tends to be an incredibly fun and popular way to learn the art of communication. This camp will focus on Oratorical and Humorous Interpretation, Expository, Impromptu Speaking.
Impromptu speaking: Impromptu is a public speaking event where students have seven minutes to select a topic, brainstorm their ideas, outline and deliver a speech. The speech is given without notes and uses an introduction, body, and conclusion. The speech can be light-hearted or serious. It can be based upon prompts that range from nursery rhymes, current events, celebrities, organizations, and more.
Humorous Interpretation: Using a play, short story, or other published work, students perform a selection of one or more portions of a piece up to ten minutes in length. Humorous Interpretation is designed to test a student’s comedic skills through script analysis, delivery, timing, and character development. Competitors may portray one or multiple characters. No props or costumes may be used. Performances can also include an introduction written by the student to contextualize the performance and state the title and the author.
Expository speaking: Crafting an original speech, Expository students should describe, clarify, illustrate, or define an object, idea, concept, or process. The speech includes research and is aimed at informing the audience; the goal is to educate, not to advocate. No visual aids are permitted. The time limit is five minutes. The speech is delivered from memory.
Oratorical Interpretation: Oratorical Interpretation, or OI, is an individual event that requires you to find a published speech that was actually delivered in a public forum. This speech event encourages you to understand the relationship of an oration to the times that inspired it. You must analyze and understand the goals and motivation of the original speaker, and interpret the oration with a whole new voice to a whole new audience.
Students are encouraged to pair this one-week camp with either the “Middle School Beginner Debate” camp, or the “Accelerated Prep Session for Lincoln Douglas Debate” camp, or the “Oxford Debate, Congressional Debate, & Parliamentary Debate” camp.