St John’s School is making it public
Wednesday October 29, 2008
St John’s School Infants public speaking competition Emily Mosely (Year 2), Dominic Pearce (Year 1) and Conor McMullen (Kinder) at the school last Wednesday.
Since the introduction of public speaking into the St John’s School curriculum a number of years ago, staff and parents have commented on how much it has benefited the students.
St John’s went ‘public’ last Wednesday when the finals of the public speaking competition were judged by local adjudicators councillor Michael Cox, The Cobar Weekly’s editor Sharon Harland and Pat Townsend, who has served as the competition’s judge for a number of years.
“I think it’s a great initiative,” Cr Cox said.
“There were a number of very good speakers, each with their own style.
“Narrowing it down to just three finalists must have been a very hard job for the teachers,” he said.
Mrs Harland said she was very impressed and also surprised at the confidence of the speakers, especially in the infants section.
“I would never have been able to get up and speak in front of an audience at such a young age,” she said.
“I’ve been judging for a number of years and I could see this year that the students have improved,” Mrs Townsend said.
“They didn’t have to be told to look up and make eye contact with the audience, they all just did it naturally,” she said.
The students have been preparing for the finals over the past few weeks.
With the guidance of their teachers, all students prepared and presented speeches to their class with eliminations held to find three students from each grade to go onto the final judging.
Students prepared their speeches on a number of topics which included what they wanted to be when they grew up, why their class was the best class, should children under 12 have a mobile phone and should boys and girls be educated together.
The class winners were: Kinder—Conor McMullen; Year 1—Dominic Pearce; Year 2—Emily Mosely; Years 3 and 4—Tayla-Rose Zani and Gabbi Lennon; Year 5—Ashleigh Kerr and Alex Kennedy (equal 1st) and Year 6—Grace Power.
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