American School of London - 29th October 2025

As usual, we started our session this week looking at the news, initially talking about the devastation caused by the hurricane in Jamaica these past few days. We then chatted about Prince Andrew, who has recently lost most of his titles, discussing the reasons behind it, in addition to talking about the prisoner who was accidentally released before he should have been.

As a warm up exercise, students put forward their opinions on whether the clock change was beneficial (most saying it was, because of the extra hour in bed!), before describing their favourite fictional character. This particular task proved tricker for them, as we were strict in trying not to say “err/umm/like” etc. and this proved a very useful task in presentation and summary skills.

Our skill of the week, looked at developing objectivity and considering multiple perspectives when debating. We considered where adopting a neutral viewpoint would be useful or even essential in life, and we discussed other topics using this lens.

Our debate this week was on whether the government’s budget should be spent mostly on health or education. Students chose how they felt and then were made to argue the other side of the debate, in order to encourage their objectivity. All performed really well on this, with some great points put forward, many backing up their arguments with credible statistics.