Running the First Practice

For early-career coaches, there is a lot to learn about competition events, coaching responsibilities, and your current students. You are not going to know everything on the first day, or even the first year. In this guide, we will narrow your focus down to the first 60 minutes of the season: the first practice or team meeting.

The best way to start your season is with a phenomenal first practice. It can create a strong first impression, generate excitement about speech and debate, and begin building team cohesion. This practice is important for welcoming back returning students and encouraging new students to join the team. We’ll cover preparation, advertising, and goal-setting, as well as provide an example lesson plan and other materials you can use.

Groundwork

Choose a location and time slot that you’ll use for team practices all season long. Your team should meet at this location and time from your first meeting to your last. Consistency makes meetings predictable for team members and makes it simpler for interested students to find you (especially if they decide to join later).

Identify a practice space

Find a practice space at your school that you can use for practices for the entire season. This will most likely be a classroom. It should allow you, at a minimum, to have noisy practices and to move furniture. Spaces with nearby areas to spread out, storage capability, and wall space to post materials are even better.

Identify a practice time

Choose a day and time slot that you plan to use for practices for the entire season. For example, if you know you’ll have practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:00-4:30 p.m., then schedule your first meeting for a Tuesday or Thursday at 3:00-4:00 p.m. Schedule your first practice as early in the semester as possible. The first two weeks of school are great, as students may not have already committed to other clubs or activities. Be sure to schedule the first practice for just one hour; any longer than that may turn away students who are on the fence about joining the team. 

Get the Word Out

Advertise widely. Use all available school-approved channels to let students know about the team. You don’t want a student to miss out on speech and debate just because they missed school announcements on one particular day.

Flyer

Create a flyer to use for advertising purposes. This flyer should have your meeting date, time, and location. Post the flyer all over campus, including hallways, common areas, and classrooms. You can also attach the flyer to your messages to other people at the school who help you recruit, as described below.

Pitch

Create a short pitch that you can share with others (in writing or verbally) to help you promote the meeting. 

For example:

Staff

Contact your principal, administrative staff, and teachers to spread the word. Often staff members will be able to recommend students who would benefit from participation in speech and debate, so you can reach out to those students directly.

Student Government

Contact your school’s club system or student government (if applicable). They can help you with recruitment, and student government students are ideal speech and debate team members.

Related School Activities

There are lots of other school activities in the general orbit of speech and debate: theater, mock trial, Model United Nations, etc. Reach out to them and request that they share the flyer and announce your first team meeting.

Website and Newsletter

Request that your flyer and announcement of the first team meeting is included on the school’s website or in the newsletter.

Events Calendar

Get the first team meeting posted on the school’s events calendar.

Social Media

Request that your flyer and announcement of the first team meeting be posted to the school’s official social media accounts. This can attract the attention of students and their families.

Student Orientation

If your school offers an orientation for new students, be there with flyers and enthusiasm.

Announcements

Request to be included in the school’s morning announcements for the week prior to the meeting.

Current Team Members

Current team members will be your most impactful recruiters. Ask them to invite their friends and classmates to the first meeting.

Lesson Plan

Here is one possible lesson plan you can use. It follows a basic practice format and includes options for you to adapt it to best suit your needs.

Time

Materials

• • Internet connection
  • Music playlist
  • Pencils or pens
  • Printed name tent sheets
  • Slides (optional)
  • Presentation technology (optional)
  • Copies of team handbook and required forms

Objective

All team practices should be intentionally designed around student outcomes and skills. Identify reasonable and achievable objectives: What do you want students to learn? What do you want students to be able to do? 

A practice without an objective is sure to be unfocused, and it can communicate to potential team members that their experience on the team is also likely to be unfocused. At your first practice, you’ll likely want to achieve at least two things:

Students get to know you and one another

The first team practice is, of course, when introductions will take place. You should introduce yourself and give students lots of opportunities to get to know one another. Building collaboration and cohesion right away will show students that they belong on the team.

Students get excited about speech and debate

Get students excited about speech and debate. They should learn what speech and debate entails as well as what being on the team will be like.

You’ll know you’ve achieved these objectives if:

• • the energy level at the first meeting is high
  • students commit to attending the next practice
  • students actually attend the next practice

Warm-Up

Use the beginning of practice to get students participating. Consider having music playing in the background while students arrive and create their name tents to lower anxiety and break the awkward pre-meeting silence.

Prepare Name Tents

Choose one of the following prompts to use for the first activity, or create your own:

Would you rather always be 10 minutes late to things or always be 20 minutes early?

Would you rather have a head the size of a tennis ball or the size of a watermelon?

Would you rather have everyone laugh at your jokes but not find anyone else’s jokes funny, or have no one laugh at your jokes but you still find other people’s jokes funny?

Would you rather always say everything on your mind or never speak again?

Silly “would you rather” questions are great for getting students to talk.

Use the slide template from above or write the prompt on the board. As students arrive, ask them to grab the name tent worksheet, fill it out, and write their answer to the prompt. Finally, they should fold it into thirds to make a triangular shape and put it on the desk in front of them, with their printed name facing out.

Preview

When it seems like most students have arrived, explain that the goals for today’s practice are introductions, getting familiar with speech and debate, and learning the expectations of the team. 

Introduce Yourself

Introduce yourself to the students. Let them know about your relevant experiences, values (why you think speech and debate is good), and your goals for the team. Your introduction should let students know:

• • Who you are, including your title and experience
  • What you value, including why you believe speech and debate is important
  • Why you coach, including your goals for the team

Activities

The bulk of practice should be an activity or activities. Does a track coach have students listen to them talk about running? Or does the track coach have students run? Limit lecture and use the first practice to get students speaking and debating.

Musical Chair Jigsaw

This activity involves playing a version of “musical chairs” to create random pairs of students. Once paired, students will discuss their answers to the prompt. Asking students to partner up randomly encourages students to connect with different team members.

Instruct students to move around the room. After 10-15 seconds, stop the music and have students sit in the seat closest to where they are. Then, students should talk with the person who is seated closest to them. 

For example: 

Set a timer for five minutes and instruct the students to introduce themselves and discuss their answers to the prompt.

Post a few discussion questions to help students get started, like:

• • Are your answers similar or different?
  • If you agree, why do you agree?
  • If you disagree, why do you disagree?
  • Which reasons are the most unexpected? Most creative?

As the students discuss, walk around the room to listen to the discussions and interject when appropriate. You might say things about their answers, like “Interesting! I wouldn’t have thought of that” or “Can you give an example?”

Depending on how many students you have, you can play musical chair jigsaw one, two, three or more times in order to encourage students to meet and discuss with several other students. In subsequent rounds, instruct students to partner with someone new each time.

Whichever activity you choose, have an idea of how you would approach or answer the prompt. This can be helpful if you have students who are reluctant to participate at the first practice. If you go first, it can break the ice and get students talking. Or, if you have current team members at the practice, you can also ask them to contribute first to start the conversation. 

Finally, congratulate students at the end of the activity. They have now participated in speech and debate!

Introduce Speech and Debate

Some students will know about speech and debate and others may be completely unaware. 

1. Describe speech and debate in general. For new students, even brief descriptions can be very helpful. For example, “Speech and debate is just like any other extracurricular activity, like cross country or Science Olympiad—except in speech and debate, you compete based on your ability to speak, act, or make arguments.” You could also mention some of the basic skills and activities speech and debate students engage in, like educating audiences, telling stories, creating visual aids, and performing monologues in speech events, or discussing politics, comparing philosophies, and weighing in on current events in debate events.

In addition, describe the benefits of participating on the speech and debate team. Students will learn to speak confidently, speak about topics they’re passionate about and become stronger thinkers. They will also make friends, travel, and boost their college applications.

2. Give students an idea about the competition options available to them as team members. 

Option A: Your Team’s Events
Introduce your team’s competition events. Include a menu of events that students could choose from, with short descriptions of each. Describe the events in simple terms to help new students. For example, you might describe Congressional Debate as “a debate event where students argue like real politicians” and Storytelling as “an event where students perform funny stories and act out characters.”

Option B: Your Team’s Events, in Depth
You may also want to explore some competition events in detail. You can show excerpts from NSDA Final Rounds to show speech and debate in action and ask students to discuss the performances.

Choose short excerpts from events that your team competes in. As they watch, ask students to write down one thing they think each speaker or team did well and one thing they think the speaker or team could work on. Afterward, have students share what they wrote with the people around them.

Explain to students that the process they just engaged in is how speech and debate competitions are scored. They have already gained even more speech and debate experience!

Option C: Explore Events
Have students explore the NSDA’s competition events. It can be energizing for new students to think about the events they’d like to compete in. For example, the NSDA’s Choosing Competition Events resource has a quiz students can take to point them in the direction of events they may enjoy.

Introduce the Team

Setting expectations for team members is one of the most important things a coach can do. Without clearly communicating expectations, students will surprise you in increasingly creative ways. Conversely, when you set expectations, students may strive to exceed them.

Give students a basic idea of what being on the team will be like. Include information about the practice schedule, the tentative competition schedule, workload expectations, and so forth.

Feedback

In most practices, students will be engaging in speech and debate skills and you or other members of the team will provide feedback to facilitate improvement. In the first team meeting, your feedback should primarily consist of enthusiastically encouraging participation.

Reflection

Reflection is meant to reinforce what students have learned during practice. In the first practice, you want students to leave feeling excited about joining the team. 

One way to accomplish this is by asking students to write down one wish or goal they have for the school year on their name tent. You can offer a few examples to help students who do not necessarily have a frame of reference for speech and debate yet. For example, they may want to make friends, win a trophy, learn about social issues, build confidence, or have something impressive to put on their resume.

Wrap-Up

Plan a strong end to the meeting. Since one of your goals is to have students officially join the team and come to the next practice, include wrap-up information that encourages students to follow through. Basically, this means providing them with all of the information they need to join the team and come to the next meeting:

1. Remind students of your name.
2. Thank students for attending.
3. Describe your excitement for the season.
4. Distribute the team handbook and/or any forms you need for new students, such as student agreements, health information, parental consent, etc. Distribute them either on paper or provide a URL or QR code if you use online forms.

5. Announce the next meeting.
6. Collect the name tents as students leave the room. This allows you to thank students by name as they leave (“Great work today Leeson, see you at the next practice!”), start learning their names, and have a list of all of the students who attended.

Follow Up

Within a week, follow up with all of the students that attended the meeting. Thank them for attending and remind them to attend the next meeting and bring their completed forms. This outreach shows you are personally interested in them returning and joining the team. 

Conclusion

After this meeting, you’ll have successfully executed the first 60 minutes and created the foundation for a strong season. Congratulations and good luck!

Author