Thunks generates thought provoking questions for students. Via @HuntingEnglish #ozedchat

Questioning – Top Ten Strategies ...is an excellent article I read a while back by @HuntingEnglish.

You can read the full piece here:

http://www.huntingenglish.com/2012/11/10/questioning-top-ten-strategies/

While the whole article is high quality there is one gem that I hadn't come across before called thunks.

3. Thunks -  http://www.thunks.co.uk

Thunks generates thought provoking questions that you can only answer with a yes or a no.

Classroom use: Students can answer the Thunks and then debate or justify their answer with arguments backed up by evidence.

Should we introduce a Soft Drink tax? Perfect debating and essay issue

Soft Drink Tax?

This week in Australia there was a call for a Soft Drink tax. 

The debate raged with many different viewpoints. A succinct summary of the opposing views available from the ABC here. 

Soft Drink Tax is a perfect issue to explored in the classroom through debates, essays or persuasive pieces.

Below are two YouTube clips which make good arguments against Soft Drink and could get your students thinking.

More of the Real Bears available at http://therealbears.org/ 

Line Debate

A line debate would be the perfect activity to start exploring this issues. A line debate is when teams debate issues and every time they make a good argument they receive a person from the other team. It has people moving around and getting to explore both sides of an issue.