Middle School Coach Resources

This page provides a breakdown of everything available for middle school coaches through the AUDL.

Curriculum & Tournament Support

Debate/Curricular Resources

• Coach Curriculum - the coach curriculum provides explanations on foundational policy debate skills, with lesson plans to help students learn and practice concepts. It is ordered such that it can ease a new team into learning about policy debate together. While we do not necessarily recommend doing every lesson plan, the curriculum provides multiple ways to teach and reinforce basic debate skills so that coaches can pick the activities and lessons that best suit their debate teams.

  • If you would like to direct students to a similar self-guided resource, there is a student curriculum linked in the Debaters’ Corner.

• Evidence/Resource Packet - this is the same packet linked for students, which they are expected to use at debate tournaments. The packets contain all the evidence students will need to debate for the year. It has several curricular supports, such as argument overviews at the beginning of the packet and fill-in-the-blank sections to help students prepare parts of their speeches.

  • New programs should expect to have all their debaters start in the Novice division and not worry too much about the Junior Varsity or Varsity packets early on. Take a look at the Junior Varsity packet if your students are performing particularly well at tournaments and may be ready to move up.

• Site Visits - scheduled 1-hour sessions where the AUDL will send staff/and or Emory students to meet with your school in-person or virtually to work on whatever you’d like. Common ways that coaches use site visits include going over the structure of debate/what to expect/how to use the packet, going over specific parts of the packet together (argument explanations, highlighting, and/or fill-in-the-blank sections), and working on individual debate skills such as flowing.

  • Each school is guaranteed 2 site visits per semester.

• Digital Debate Center (DDC) - weekly 1-hour Zoom sessions where AUDL staff and/or Emory students are available to offer individual help to coaches and students. It’s a very useful resource for you or your students to ask questions about anything debate-related.

  • We highly recommend you as the coach come and work through your questions as you get started (and as often as you find helpful after that). If you are unable to make the weekly session, please email us about setting up a separate time to get your questions answered.

  • Anyone attending must register in advance. Registration links are provided via the AUDL calendar and weekly coach emails. Please make sure you/your students register ahead of time so that we are able to prepare and recruit additional instructors if necessary.

  • Students are more than welcome to attend on their own (but need to get parents’ permission). The DDC is a good place to send students who want individualized help beyond your school’s regular meetings, such as debaters who want to move ahead of or could use help catching up with the rest of the group.

  • If you would like for your school’s debate team to attend together, we would recommend scheduling a site visit instead.

• AUDL YouTube - self-guided resources for students and coaches to learn more about debate generally and debating the topic for the year specifically. Videos include argument and debate jargon explanations, tips, and activity demonstrations.

  • The demonstration debate is particularly useful for new programs. It uses the Middle School Novice speech times and a preliminary version of their evidence packet (overall arguments are likely to be similar, but individual pieces of evidence may differ). There is an un-moderated version that is useful for seeing the structure of a debate round, as well as a longer version with explanations between speeches.

Tournament Logistics

• Coach Tournament Guide - this document is a comprehensive logistics guide for AUDL tournaments. It includes a loose schedule, evidence guidelines and speech times for each division, and SpeechWire guides with picture instructions.

  • SpeechWire guides: how to register for a tournament (coaches), how to access pairings and ballots (students), how to access and submit electronic ballots (judges)

Paperwork/Forms

• In-person Programming Waiver - any individual affiliated with your school (students, coaches, judges, and observers) who will attend an in-person tournament needs to complete a waiver for the year. You can bring signed waivers to tournaments or upload them via Google Form.

• Debater Registration - this is a form to be completed by students to help the AUDL collect accurate information about the students we serve

Argumentative Speech Bowl (ASB)

The Argumentative Speech Bowl is an asynchronous speech competition open to all AUDL middle and high school students, with an in-person showcase for top speakers from participating schools in the spring. We have one main hub for all ASB information which is linked in both coach and students sections of the website. It includes:

• Schedule for the year, detailing when the topic and resource packet for each round will be announced, along with submission deadlines

• Resource packets for each round. The resource packets have guidance on crafting speeches and starting resources for research on the round’s topic. Coaches can use them to help students craft speeches or direct students to use them to come up with speeches on their own.

The Argumentative Speech Bowl is a great program for students who are interested in doing research, improving their public speaking skills, and/or getting exposure to other topics throughout the year.

AUDL Communications & Schedule

• Coach Emails - communications directly from the AUDL with reminders and updates regarding programs and resources

  • Emails include a link to an archive of all coach emails for the year

• Calendar - lists all AUDL programming, including debate tournaments and Digital Debate Center sessions