Resources · For teachers & chairs

How to Start a Model UN Club: Advisor Starter Kit

Every guide to starting a Model UN club tells you to "hold meetings and teach procedure." This kit is the part they leave out: what actually happens at each of the first eight meetings, what to say to your administration, and how to get a room of beginners to a full practice simulation in one semester.

It assumes no MUN experience on your part. Each meeting plan runs 45 to 60 minutes and leans on a printable sheet from this library, so the preparation load stays close to zero.

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Before the first meeting

The pitch, the budget, and recruitment

What to ask your administration for

A room one afternoon a week, a faculty sponsor (you), and permission to travel to one or two conferences a year. That is the whole footprint to start.

The academic case

Model UN trains research writing, extemporaneous speaking, and negotiation, and roughly 400,000 students take part worldwide each year. It reads as a serious academic activity because it is one.

The cost picture

Club meetings cost nothing beyond printing. Conference fees vary widely by conference and region, so budget per event using the conference’s published fees, and check whether your district can subsidize registration before collecting from families.

Recruitment that works

Recruit in September through history and English teachers, not posters: ask each to name three students who argue well or write well, and invite those students personally. Ten to twenty members is a healthy first year.

Choosing a first conference

Pick a local or regional one-day or two-day conference with a beginner committee, not a national circuit event. Register early; popular committees fill. One good first conference recruits your second-year roster for you.

The first eight meetings

45-60 minutes each · one semester · ends in a full practice simulation

1

What Model UN is, by doing it

Goal: Students leave having debated something, not having watched slides.

  • Ten minutes: what a committee is, what a delegate does, what a conference weekend looks like.
  • Assign every student a country from a printed list; no research needed today.
  • Run a 25-minute informal debate on an accessible global topic, going around the room twice.
  • Close by naming what just happened in MUN terms: speakers list, caucus, bloc.
2

How committee actually runs

Goal: Everyone can raise the four motions that run 90% of committee.

  • Teach only four motions: moderated caucus, unmoderated caucus, extension, and moving to vote.
  • Print the points and motions cheat sheet, one per student.
  • Re-run last week’s topic, this time with placards and the four motions enforced.
  • Rotate two students in as co-chairs for the final 15 minutes.
3

Country research workshop

Goal: Every student leaves with a half-completed country profile.

  • Assign countries for the practice simulation in meeting 8, and announce its topic now.
  • Walk through the country research worksheet, one section at a time, on a projector with a sample country.
  • Students research their own country for 30 minutes; you circulate.
  • Homework: finish the worksheet before meeting 4.
4

Position papers

Goal: Every student drafts the three sections in class, however roughly.

  • Show one strong sample paper; point at the three sections rather than lecturing on them.
  • Students draft from their worksheet using the position paper template, 30 minutes.
  • Pair students to swap papers and mark one vague sentence each.
  • Homework: a clean one-page version.
5

Public speaking day

Goal: Every student delivers a timed 60-second speech and gets one note.

  • Teach the hook, policy, call-to-action frame with the speech planner sheet.
  • Fifteen minutes to draft; students speak from fragments, not scripts.
  • Every student speaks for 60 seconds; the room gives one strength, you give one fix.
  • Repeat speakers who finish early with a 30-second version: same content, tighter.
6

Resolution writing workshop

Goal: Blocs produce one draft resolution with correctly formatted clauses.

  • Teach clause anatomy with the phrase bank sheet: preambs set up, operatives act.
  • Form blocs of three or four; each drafts three preambulatory and four operative clauses.
  • Enforce the format strictly once: punctuation, numbering, one long sentence.
  • Blocs trade drafts and attack one unfunded or vague clause in the other draft.
7

Simulation prep and chairing

Goal: Delegates arrive at meeting 8 ready; two students can chair it.

  • Pick two chairs; give them the chairing script and rehearse the opening ten minutes.
  • Everyone else: finish papers and speeches for the simulation topic, in pairs.
  • Walk the full room through what the 90-minute simulation will look like.
  • Print everything for next week: placards, cheat sheets, the chairs’ script.
8

The practice simulation

Goal: A complete 90-minute committee, gavel to vote.

  • Run of show: roll call (5), speakers list (20), two moderated caucuses (20), unmoderated caucus (15), drafting and merging (15), voting (10), debrief (5).
  • You sit in the back with the scoring rubric; the student chairs run the room.
  • Let procedure be imperfect; only step in if debate stalls completely.
  • Debrief on the rubric criteria, and hand out one written note per delegate within the week.

How to use this sheet

  1. 1

    Run the eight meetings in order

    The sequence is deliberate: students debate before they research, research before they write, and write before they simulate. Skipping to the simulation early is the most common way new clubs lose members.

  2. 2

    Print the four companion sheets before you start

    Meetings 2 through 7 each lean on one printable from this library: the cheat sheet, the research worksheet, the two templates, and the chairing script. Print class sets once and reuse them.

  3. 3

    Give students the room as fast as possible

    Student chairs from meeting 7 onward, student-run recruitment in year two. Clubs where the advisor chairs everything plateau; clubs with student secretariats compound.

The four companion sheets: the points and motions cheat sheet, the country research worksheet, the position paper template, and the chairing script for your student chairs. Score the simulation with the delegate scoring rubric.