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Rotary Youths Speaks Competition 2017

On the 28th November 2017 myself (Mackenzie Whitehouse-Baker), Harry Davidson and Finley Meehan took part in The Rotary Youths Speaks Competition 2017, which this year was hosted at KES.

As a group, we decided to write a speech on the topic of E-Safety. We thought this subject would be a good idea as E-Safety is a growing problem not just in school but all over the world!

There were three different positions within our group that one of us had to partake, so we decided that I would take up the chairperson’s role (the introduction, on a 2 minute time limit), Finley would be positioned as the main speaker (the main speech, on a 6 minute time limit) and that Harry would propose the vote of thanks (another 2 minute time limit).

We spent many evenings after school (and many nights at home) practicing and writing our speeches in the LRC with the help from Miss Roberts. Once we had all learned our speeches, we had to put them all together to make one presentation. The hardest bit was preparing for when the judges intervene as we had to be prepared to answer and recount questions from them on the night. The problem with this part of the presentation, was that we didn’t know what the questions were going to be and so we had to use guess work during our preparation.

The big day came around so fast, but we knew that we were ready. All of us arrived at KES at 6:30pm with the competition starting at 7pm. We were privileged to have one of our senior members of staff, Miss Aviss in the audience (although this added to the nerves!). One of the first things we noticed on arrival was that we were the youngest group taking part, so it was going to be a big test for us!

We were drawn to go first (the one place we didn’t want to be drawn!) but we were confident that we were going to do our absolute best. We gave our presentation without many mistakes, and came off the stage proud of ourselves and each other!

Once every team had completed their speech, we waited anxiously to see who had won. Luckily for us all of our hard work paid off as the judges announced Springwood as the winning team!

This win means that we have advanced to the next round! We were over the moon with the result and that we had made it to the regional finals which will take place in late February or early March 2018,

As a group, we would like to thank everybody who supported us on the night and especially Miss Roberts . Without her – we wouldn’t have even been taking part!

Mackenzie, Finley and Harry 7s1