Umina wins debating in local division

Umina Beach Public School's Year 6 debating team have won the local division of the Premier's Debating Challenge.

"Our Year 6 debating team won their local division and have begun competing in the knock out rounds," said the school's debating teacher, Ms Angela Ainsworth.

"In their last round competition our team, the Umina Da Bomb-baters competed against the Avoca Beach Brainiacs.

"The topic for the debate was that: students in Years' 5 and 6 should watch the news each night and write a weekly report about it for homework.

"The affirmative team (Avoca) claimed that this would be a much more fun way to do homework.

"It would help students to become 21st century learners.

"It would benefit students greatly by increasing their knowledge of current events and it would improve student's writing ability.

"The negative team (Umina) argued that the news programs, which are televised each night, are made for an adult audience and the content often features violence, terrorism and inappropriate content for children.

"Students are already stressed out with enough homework to do.

"Students in this age group think watching the news is boring.

"Students in Years' 5 and 6 watch BTN (children's news program) each week and already learn about this at school," the Umina team argued.

"Avoca rebutted that it would not be more time consuming as it would replace the regular spelling and maths homework, many students did not find watching the news to be boring and that teachers would tell students which channels and segments to watch to ensure that they don't watch anything inappropriate.

"Umina countered that it would be impossible for teachers to know what the news is going to show each night as it is live.

"If we got rid of the current model of homework, the literacy and numeracy skills of students would suffer, and students may become depressed and frightened about what is going on in the world."

Ms Ainsworth said: "It was a very close debate but the adjudicator declared that Umina delivered the most convincing arguments.

"Both teams were lucky to have a special judge, Mr Tony Davey from The Arts Unit, adjudicate the debate.

"He was able to give us some great advice to help us prepare for our next debate against Erina Heights Public School.

"Our Year 6 Debating team have now made it to the top 16 teams in the Hunter-Central Coast region, which is an outstanding achievement."

SOURCE:

Newsletter, 11 Sep 2018

Lyn Davis, Umina Beach Public School