Should schools ban smartphones? A ready-to-run debate lesson
A 45-minute debate lesson for middle school students on banning phones in school, with a student handout, sentence frames and teacher notes. Students take a side, defend it, then argue the opposite.
Park English · Published 2026-07-15 · 1 min read
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Phone bans are a live argument in a lot of countries right now, which makes them good classroom material: students already have opinions, and both sides are genuinely defensible.
This lesson is written for middle school, roughly A2 to B1. It needs one whiteboard and the handout below.
Lesson shape (45 minutes)
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 5 min | Warm-up — hands up: who checked a phone before class? |
| 8 min | Vocabulary and sentence frames on the board |
| 7 min | Students read the handout and pick a side |
| 15 min | Debate in pairs, then swap sides |
| 10 min | Class vote and one-sentence written answer |
Why the side-swap matters
The single most useful part of this lesson is making students argue the opposite of what they believe. It stops the loud student winning by volume, and it forces the vocabulary to get used twice.
Tell them at the start that the swap is coming. If it is a surprise, the weaker students freeze.
Teacher warnings
- Do not let it become Korean. Give a phrase to fall back on: "How do I say...?" Write it on the board before you start.
- Do not correct during the debate. Note the errors and do three of them at the end.
- If a student has no opinion, give them the job of counting arguments for each side. They still have to listen in English.
Grading, if you need a mark
One sentence at the end, written: "Schools should / should not ban phones because ..." Mark the because clause, not the opinion.