Year 5 and Year 6 Speech and Debate Finals

Last Thursday saw one of the biggest academic events in the calendar for our Upper Junior age children, The Year 5 and Year 6 Speech and Debate Finals.

The competition, now in its seventh year, is always an enormous challenge for the children involved. The children were given an additional challenge: the speeches and debates should be focused on an aspect of The UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, as part of the school’s celebration of its 30th anniversary.

For Year 5, the competition begins only a few weeks beforehand, with many of the children learning about speeches for the very first time. Within an incredibly short period of time, each child is expected to write and deliver a speech, a task that would terrify most adults. One child from each class is chosen as a finalist and have only a few days to rewrite, improve and lengthen their speeches.

Year 6 have a similar process, having experienced the speech competition themselves a year before. They review the writing techniques from the speeches and apply them to debating, as well as working on a range of new skills so they can listen and respond to their opposing team.

The competition was fierce, the quality outstanding and each and every adult in the Secondary Auditorium  was as proud as could be. Each child that spoke could have been a winner and our judges, Mr Neil Gorton, Mr Gavin Donnelly and Ms Shaheena Pall, one of the competition founders, had extremely difficult decisions to make while the room was treated to some beautiful, and festive music from four talented musicians, Caellum McIntosh, Chanhyeok Kim, Joon Heuk Lee and April Kim.

The judges decided that in the Year 5 winning speech was ‘Why children should have access to clean water’ by Monique Geronimo. The second and third runners up were Sophie Nguyen and Anh Huy Ho.

In Year 6, the motion to be debated was ‘Should children have the right to choose their own timetable?’

The judges decided that the team opposing the motion were the winners, and Karzan Ong, Timothy Suh, Emma Diep and Casi Curran were able to celebrate with their well-earned trophies.

Congratulations to all of the children that took part and thank you to all of those who attended and were involved.

Mr Gary Fyles, Year 5 Teacher/Science Leader