It has been an extremely

busy, yet successful, start to the Public Speaking program at St Bede’s in 2014! All students who have been involved with Public Speaking so far this year are to be congratulated and thanked for their excellent efforts.

AINGER PUBLIC SPEAKING COMPETITION

The year begun with three Year 10 students competing in the heats for the Rotary Club of Richmond’s AINGER Public Speaking Competition. Stan Mavroudis (10), Samuel Preston (10) and Matthew Slater (10) all competed in separate evening events during May at the NHP Engineering building in Richmond. All our students were impressive in their prepared four-minute speeches, and Matt Slater was invited to progress to the event’s Grand Final.

In this Grand Final, held at Amora Riverwalk Hotel on Monday 26th May, Matt competed against nine other Years 11 and 12 competitors from other Melbourne schools. We are pleased to announce that Matt was named the Runner-up for the evening for his speech, ‘Cool’. Matt earned $100 for winning the first heat and $300 for the Runner-up prize. Congratulations Matt!

ROSTRUM VOICE OF YOUTH COMPETITION

Four students accepted the challenge of competing in Rostrum Victoria’s ‘Voice of Youth’ Public Speaking Competition, held at Mount Scopus College on Sunday May 25th. Remington Fonseca (9), Jackson Lee (9), Nicholas Gale (8) and Sam Preston (10) all presented prepared speeches on one of the topics set by Rostrum. Our Junior students presented six minute speeches whilst Sam, our only Senior representative, presented an eight minute prepared speech. Each of our four students delivered confident, thoughtful and polished speeches. Pleasingly, Sam Preston was invited to progress to the Semi-final stage.

That same afternoon, Sam competed against three other students in a bid to make the State Final. He re-presented his same eight-minute speech on ‘Asylum seekers’ as well as a short-notice speech. Whilst Sam spoke very passionately about his topics, he unfortunately didn’t win his semi-final. Congratulations to Sam for making the semi-final stage for the second time in this competition!

LEGACY’S JUNIOR PUBLIC SPEAKING AWARD

On Thursday 29th May, four of our fine public speakers represented the College in one of the heats for Legacy’s Junior Public Speaking Award. David Antolos (10), Jackson Lee (9), Darcy Tilbrook (8) and Daniel Passante (7) all prepared speeches on areas to do with social justice. Dave spoke about “A voice for the children”, Jackson spoke about “A most valuable legacy”, Darcy spoke about “The two way street of education” and Daniel spoke about “Racism”. Additionally, they each presented a 2-minute impromptu speech on the same topic – THE NEWS.

All four students were congratulated by other Legatees, teachers, competitors and visitors on their challenging and diverse speech matter and passion for these topics. While we are proud of all four students and their exceptional efforts, there could be only one winner, and Jackson Lee was announced the winner of that heat – progressing to one of the Preliminary Finals in September. Well done and all the best for that next stage of competition, Jackson!

VCAA’S PLAIN ENGLISH SPEAKING AWARD (PESA)

On Friday 13th June, St Bede’s College hosted one of the regional heats in the Plain English Speaking Award. Two of our senior students, Connor Johnston (11) and Sean Hollis (12) competed against accomplished public speaking students from five other schools. Sean’s speech on “Freedom of speech” and Connor’s prepared speech on “What Australian culture would be like if the ABC didn’t exist” were both thoughtful in their matter and excellent in their delivery. Additionally, all eleven competitors were asked to present a 2-3 minute speech (from only 4 minutes’ preparation) on the topic THE ENDING IS JUST THE BEGINNING – and Connor and Sean’s impromptu efforts were innovative in their content and exceptional in their presentation.

The adjudicators announced Sean Hollis as the winner of that closely contested heat, and he progresses to the State Semi-finals in a couple of weeks’ time. Connor and Sean are both congratulated for their efforts in that competition – they were both fine representatives of the College. Thanks also to all the teachers and classes who had the wonderful opportunity of viewing this high-quality public speaking event in action, and to our accomplished event hosts, Matt Slater (10) and Sam Preston (10). We wish Sean all the best as he prepares for the State semi-final.

There is still a lot more public speaking events to happen in the latter half of the year, so good luck to all students involved in those competitions!

Robyn Kensley

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