Our first Templates Tournament!

We at Kialo Edu, the world’s largest argument-mapping platform for education, want to expand our free Kialo Templates library with all the great ideas you teachers have had. So, we have launched the Templates Tournament with a top prize of $500 USD!

Send us your template—on the topic of your choice—and the best ones will win:

Prize money will be paid out in Amazon vouchers.

Entries must be submitted by Tuesday, May 16th at

Winners will be contacted by May 29th.

Educators at primary and secondary schools in North America and Europe may enter (see eligible locations).

Brief

Last year, we launched Kialo Templates. This library of pre-made discussion resources is designed to help teachers quickly get their students involved in meaningful classroom discussions. We want to fill our free library with the most useful content we can, so we figured—who better to help than our wonderful educator community?

And so we’ve created the Kialo Edu Templates Tournament! We’re looking for the best templates you can come up with, be they pared-back versions of discussions your students have already had or entirely new content you created just for this tournament.

What we want to see

We are looking for original templates that will spark a fascinating classroom discussion and be a useful addition to our templates library. By “useful” we mean anything appropriate for a classroom activity, be it an icebreaker, general debate exercise, or a discussion based on curricular content.

Submitted templates must:

• Be in English and in the single-thesis format.
• Cover a topic not already found in our templates library. Please check to make sure!
• Have a thesis statement. The thesis should not be in question form (although the name of the template can be a question).
• Have exactly two pro claims and two con claims under the thesis to help start the discussion.
• Include background info between 150–350 words.

Please note that you do not need to include a cover image with your submission.

What our judges are looking for:

• Great English.
• A highly debatable thesis on an original, engaging topic.
• The starter pro and con claims should be general and debatable, with plenty of potential for pros and cons beneath.
• Excellent starter claims should each set up distinct lines of reasoning that could not be found elsewhere in the discussion.
• The background info should have an engaging introduction, a paragraph for the pros, a paragraph for the cons, and a short conclusion. This text should not argue more for one side than the other. 
• An excellent background info activates students’ knowledge on the topic. Thus, the arguments in the starter claims should be clearly articulated and explained within the background info.

Below is an example of a Kialo Template you can use as a model for your own. All of our templates are carefully curated, so feel free to use any from our library as inspiration for your own (but remember we only want single-thesis discussions!).

Who’s eligible

For this competition, only current primary or secondary school teachers based in the following countries can apply:

Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Northern Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States of America.

For verification purposes, we will require you to provide your school email address when submitting your template. The top 3 winners will get a shout-out on our blog and social media!

Only one template will be considered per applicant.

How to enter

Entries must be submitted by May 16th at 21:59 (9:59 pm) UTC.

Please ensure that link sharing is enabled for your submitted Kialo template.

Do not edit your template after submission, as this will result in disqualification.

To enter, simply follow the instructions in the form below after completing your template!

If you’d like news on how to enter future Tournaments, subscribe to our mailing list!

Contact, FAQ, & terms and conditions

If you have any questions, feel free to consult our FAQ or contact us at competitions@kialo-edu.com.

The terms and conditions for this Templates Tournament can be found here.