What is a ‘balloon debate’?
The idea behind balloon debates is that a hot air balloon is sinking (ideally, for Drama-based Oracy, over a perilous ocean or dangerous terrain) and the only way to save the ballooners is to throw one out.
How it works
- Ballooners can be people (celebrities, artists, scientists), items (iPads, toasters, sliced bread) or concepts and ideas (Pythagoras’s theorem, wealth, liberty)
- Different students represent the people (or objects/concepts/materials) in the balloon and argue in turn to the class (or group if being done in groups) why they should be saved
- The audience evaluate the relative cases and vote the people off the balloon one by one
- If a figure, items or concept is thrown out their role in and contribution to the world disappears as though they had never existed.
Across the curriculum
This could be done with scientists / inventors / materials / mathematical formulae / writers / artists / musicians / philosophers / public services or anything else which links to your curriculum.
You could theme the balloon with for example children’s writers, footballers or scientists or you could mix it up so that Roald Dahl finds himself up against Ronaldo!
#keepkidstalking at home
Here’s a way you could do this at home:
- Each family member chooses (or is assigned) a famous person to speak for: they have to argue why their person should get to stay in the balloon because of how valuable their life is or was
- At the end of the debate, the family votes on who should stay in the balloon
- This might be a good one to do on Zoom with another family so that there is someone independent to vote or maybe one person sits out to be the judge, but it could still work if everyone taking part votes
- You need a minimum of two people debating for it work.