Speech Finals

By Bryden Houliston | Posted: Wednesday August 23, 2023

Over the term, classes have been working on writing speeches with the best of each class competing to see who will move on to the Rotary Speech Competition.

On Friday 18th August, Year 7 and Year 8 speech finals were held. There was a wide variety of speech topics being presented to the school and our judges, Mrs Bell and Ms Hengst. Speech topics ranged from "Why Artificial Intelligence is Evil" to "Why You Shouldn't Buy Lynx Africa." 

Year 7 was represented by the following students

Room 3 - Connor talking about animal abuse and Eva informing us about plastic pollution.

Room 4 - Eilidh expressed her concerns about how we are polluting the air.

Room 7 - Zara talking about the importance of sleep and Lydia intrigued us with her topic of why cats should be treated the same as dogs.

Room 8 - Stephen informed us on the benefits of gaming.

Room 9 - Cassidie showed us why we should spread kindness in our world, Lizzie talked about why the phrase "She'll be right" is doing more harm than good, and Ben used his previous experiences to help us understand the importance of childhood lessons.

Room 10 - Owen expressed his concerns towards technology by telling us why A.I. is evil and Amelia talked about why animals have the right to live longer loves.

Room 13 - Patrick shared his love of books and why we should be reading more of them while Amelie Cowley talked about how to express aroha.

Room 14 - Kyran talked to us about why we should explore space.

Top 3 in year 7 were:

• Ben Stribling
• Lydia Roach
• Patrick Woodnutt

Year 8

Room 1 - Tom talked about the annoying things that parents say while Jai Sree discussed what it would look like if we lived on another planet.

Room 2 - Isaac Lane expressed his concerns towards the honey bees and why we need to save them.

Room 5 - Madison talked about why we need to ban cellphones at all schools while Will urged us to all eat bananas.

Room 6 - Awatea urged us to donate blood while Decan urged us not to buy Lynx Africa.

Room 11 - Ethan told us about why it's "Our Year" for the Warriors

Room 12 - Ben told us about how he loves a good movie...... until they start to sing while Rua wants all war to end.

Room 15 - Xavier expressed his concerns towards deforestation.

Room 16 - Max wants us all to get more sleep, Emmy wants us to stop being so cruel to animals, and Phoebe wants us all to learn how to swim.

Top 3 in Year 8 were:

• Tom Gainsford
• Jai Sree Akilandeswari Jai Sabarinath
• Max Hurring

Overall, coming third place in the school was Tom Gainsford and his riveting speech on the annoying things that parents do. In second place was Max Hurring discussing the importance of sleep and why we need more of it. In first place, it was Ben Stribling who took it out with his interesting and humorous speech about the childhood lessons he has had to learn the hard way. 

Everyone did amazingly well with their speeches and the finalists will compete in the Rotary Speech finals later in the year.