Smash Boom Best is a debate podcast for kids. Season 3 will be airing this summer, 2020, but you can still access past episodes from Seasons 1 and 2, and even vote for your choices here. For example, I listened to “Invisibility vs. Flying” before writing this blog post. The episodes are an excellent way to introduce debate to students in upper elementary and middle school with their kid-friendly topics and efforts to include their young listeners by inviting them to submit debate ideas. The “Micro” and “Sneak Attack” rounds add to the fun.
Once your students have listened to a debate or two (the episodes are about 35 minutes long), you can use the curriculum provided by Smash Boom Best to help them create their own exciting debates. On that same page you will also find downloads for scorecards that can be used during the debates and some other debate resources.
Smash Boom Best is part of a family of podcasts that also includes Brains On. This is an award-winning show where the host investigates those burning questions we have about science, like, “Can you dig to the center of the earth?” More episodes can be found here. For educator resources and some transcripts of select shows, you can go to this page.
