Today we completed our three debates in front of Joe Bennett our adjudicator. The speech finalists presented their persuasive speeches as well.

Over the last few weeks Katherine Cottier has been coaching Tōtara and Raupo students on formal debating protocol.  We chose some topics and drew three of them out of a hat.  We created our teams of three and then decided which team was going to be the affirmative and which was for the negative.  Each team member did some research and began writing their debates. With Katherine's support we made changes where necessary and practised speaking them.  

I was very nervous about taking part, but I was also really excited at the same time.  This is the first time I have spoken on my own in front of an audience.  I'm extremely proud of the outcome and pleased to say, our team won.  We debated that ocean swimming is better than pool swimming. I'll probably do it again when the opportunity arises.

Four speeches were presented and the winning speech was from Molly Bruce on Save the Bees.