Pupils from a Tynemouth school have been making their voices heard at a local debating competition.
Three groups of Year 8 pupils from Kings Priory School all took part in the Youth Speaks Competition, which was organised by the Whitley Bay Rotary Club.
They competed in the intermediate round and the Kings Priory group that came out on top did so ahead of extremely tough competition.
They will now take part in the district final on Sunday 8 January 2017 and will receive mentoring from the Whitley Bay Speakers. This could lead them to the national final which will be in May 2017.
Amy Auld, Curriculum Team Leader for English at Kings Priory School, said: “The pupils involved were a credit to themselves and the school.”
“They performed with confidence, eloquence and articulacy, so much so that the judges commented that some of the senior teams would struggled to perform at the same level.”
“One of the judges, from the Whitley Bay Speakers Group, even commented that some of the adult teams could learn a lot from our young speakers”.
Each Youth Speaks team consists of: The Chairperson, the Speaker and the Proposer of the Vote of Thanks. The Chairperson has two minutes to welcome the audience, to introduce the Speaker and to inform the audience of the relevance or expertise of the Speaker towards his/her chosen subject.
The Speaker then has six minutes to deliver an address and a maximum of two minutes to address a question from the audience. Finally the Vote of Thanks is given by the Proposer for two minutes.
The Speaker is free to choose their topic, subject to organisers’ suggestions of a theme being noted and also subject to the organisers’ approval and guidelines with regard to offensive matter being adhered to.
The winning group was made up of Kings Priory pupils Awa Traore who took up the Speaker role, Chairperson Emma Wroe and Millie Jackson who as Proposer delivered the vote of thanks. Their topic of discussion was arranged marriage.
Miss Auld added: “All of the pupils worked incredibly hard researching, performing and supporting one another.”
“The winning group showed collaboration, enthusiasm and real passion for their topic which saw them gain first place.”
Well done to valiant runners up Eleanor King, Samantha Checkley and Alice Grainger who debated animal testing and to Josie May Fieldson, Ben Morris and Danielle Grove and their discussion around gun laws.