Decide on a topic for your debate and announce it well ahead of time. This will give students who want to participate a chance to do research and prepare arguments. Sample debate topics include pros and cons of abortion or health care legislation, taxes, the situation in the Middle East or other political topics. You might also debate about nature versus nurture when it comes to raising children, or the philosophy behind a particular religion.
Choose sides for the debate. You can informally poll the students to find out if they are on a particular side, or if they want to take a side. Feel free to divide the class into sections and tell them each to research some of the facts on which the debate will be based.
Decide on two main points to argue for a debate and express them in two thesis statements or ideas about which students can express their opinions. On the day of the debate, write the two statements on the board. For example, if you are debating abortion, you might write, "Abortion should be abolished" on one side of the board and "Abortion should always be legal" on the other. Or, for the nature versus nurture debate, you might write, "Children learn from nurturing" on one side and "Children grow into who they are because of their genetics" on the other.
Allow each side to make a statement and provide proof as to why it is correct. Then allow for the other side to rebut that point of view, and prove it is not true. Then the second side can present its own point and give proof. After that, the first side can rebut and present another point. For instance, the side that is pro legalized abortion might make a statement about the freedom to choose what to do with one's body, and cite the Bill of Rights to support that stance. The other side might rebut by claiming that the Bill of Rights should also extend to the unborn child, and therefore abortion is murder. The second side might then quote scientists who say life begins at conception. From that point on, both sides can continue to bring up points and prove them and also rebut the arguments from the other side.
Assess the debate. You can do this in several ways, suggests Ruth Kennedy, assistant professor at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Options include giving everyone full marks for participating, grading on a pass-fail basis, rating students as a team and evaluating their individual performance. Kennedy lists criteria including persuasiveness, objectivity, assertiveness in challenging fallacies in opponents' arguments, quality of research and quantity of sources.