What a wide range of topics were covered - from the hilarious to personal experiences, and everything in between - all of the participants were worthy of their places in the finals.
Fortunately, no-one in the school had to decide the final placings. That unenviable and most difficult of tasks fell to our guest judges Gemma and Babette.
With no time to get nervous Surya was first up, followed by the other Y5-6 finalists. They set a high standard with well crafted and confidently delivered speeches. It was then onto our youngest students, all Year 0, one of whom, Miesha, has only been at school for a month. (I wish I was as good as any of them by the time I had finished primary school, let alone just started school).
Marcus, Heidi and Sophia our Y1-2 students showed supreme confidence for their age and would have made the judges jobs particularly difficult with their wide-ranging styles on display. Last, but certainly not least was the Y3-4 competitors with Amaira destined to be the final speaker. If she was nervous at having had to wait so long to give her speech, it did not show.
After time to go away and deliberate over what they had seen and heard, the judges came back with the following results for the inaugural Amesbury Speech Competition:
Year 0Junyi 1stKailey G 2ndMiesha 3rd
Year 1-2Sofia C 1stMarcus 2ndHeidi 3rd
Year 3-4Riyaan 1stAmaira 2ndKirat 3rd
Year 5-6Surya 1stSante 2ndSein 3rd
Congratulations to all of the students who participated, not just in the finals but also in the heats where a number of other outstanding speakers missed out on making it through to the finals.
