Writopia Lab’s Online Junior World School Styles Debate Tournament

Writopia Lab’s mission is to foster joy, literacy, and critical thinking in children and teens from all backgrounds through creative writing. This mission is rooted in our belief that celebrating and sharing ideas and stories contributes to the building of stronger, more empathetic young people and societies. On November 13th, 2021, we carried our mission into the realm of public discourse through the World Style Schools debate circuit. This tournament connected over 70 debaters from 9 different nations in the spirit of sportsmanship, intellectual curiosity, and youth empowerment. Now, we call upon debaters of the world to return to their podiums and compete with us once more! This time, we are thrilled to be co-hosting our tournament with Debate Spaces! Debate Spaces connects and empowers middle schoolers worldwide, teaching debate to foster critical thinking, cultural empathy, and civic engagement. Every month, Debate Spaces brings kids and teens from dozens of countries together to make friends, discuss important issues, and have structured debates. For our spring tournament, we will be offering both “novice” and “experienced” leagues.

Competition Process

We will be using an altered version of World School Styles Debate.

For our “novice” division, time limits for our tournament are more flexible, and each speaker may present their case for 3-5 minutes without points being deducted.
For our “experienced” division, each speaker should speak for 5 minutes in order to avoid time penalties.

Our judges will be trained in strength-based education and will provide feedback to the debaters in a way that empowers them and motivates them to reach their full potential! We provide a list of five motions for our novice division and a list of ten motions for our experienced division. Three of these motions will be chosen by our judges to be debated during the tournament. The motion for the championship round will be given by the judges with no advanced notice. Our motions will be chosen in order to provide a wide variety of world issues for our debaters to address, including motions involving U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Judging Criteria

We evaluate our debaters by giving them a score from 0-100. Their scores are determined by the following metrics: 40% Content 40% Style 20% Strategy The teams chosen for the final round will be determined first by total number of wins, followed by their cumulative scores.

Participate

Website: https://www.writopialab.org/programs/what-we-do/debate-team/debate-tournament

Managing Organization: Writopia Lab, in partner with Debate Spaces

Eligibility:
To be eligible, teams must be 3-5 members.

Debaters qualify for our “novice” league if all members on the team have competed in less than 2 parliamentary tournaments, and if the average age of their teammates is 12 or younger.
Debaters qualify for our “experienced” league if they feel confident in their parliamentary debate skills and/or have competed in 2+ tournaments. The average age of their teammates must be 14 years or younger.

Registration Dates

May 2, 2022 8:59pm PDT