Grove students outstanding performance at district speaking competition.
A fantastic evening was held recently at the Festival Drayton Centre. The district final of the Rotary Clubs, ‘Youth Speaks’ competition was held with Shropshire secondary schools and colleges competing for a place in the regional final. The competition has been held in Shropshire for many years with the entries from Shropshire's top schools and colleges. It encourages students to formulate ideas on a specific topic and then to present them concisely in a limited time. It also provides a platform for young people to experience public speaking. It was a first for Grove students to enter the event and having only 4 weeks to research, prepare and rehearse the speech left little room for error.
The team of three, Jordan Ashley, chairman, Robbie Bosley, speaker and Oliver Hobbs, proposer of the vote of thanks, produced a thought provoking and articulate presentation, which they delivered perfectly. As chairman Jordan opened, the proceedings and introduced the speaker Robbie. The speech was written by Robbie Bosley on a topic close to his heart; renewable energy. He offered an interesting outlook on energy and the effects of using fossil fuels or nuclear power to generate it. The speech was summed up with excellent reasoning on how renewable energy is our best option for the future. The speech had to be clear, concise, factual and most of all interesting enough to hold the audiences attention for six minutes! As there were no clocks in the room it was up to the speaker to be prepared enough to know when the six minutes was up and to have delivered a word perfect rousing speech, which was neither rushed or drawn out to fit the time. Robbie's speech timed to perfection. To complete the presentation, Oliver gave a succinct review of the speech and proposed thanks to both the chairman and the speaker.
The Grove team Robbie Bosley, Jordan Ashley and Oliver Hobbs
On reviewing the event all three students have revealed it was a fantastic experience, which has boosted their confidence in public speaking. The team received help from Mrs Thomas (English), who advised on some of the wording and Mrs J Fisher (Head of Drama) who mentored the students with stage presence and audience Interaction. Mrs Thomas was present at the event and said, “they did incredibly well, being up against not only the top schools in Shropshire but in the UK, I did have concerns when Robbie told me he did not have notes, but he was confident in his ability and spoke for the entire 6 minutes without a single prompt. He was one of only two speakers to do this.” Overall the Grove team triumphed in fourth place, the highlight of the evening was Jordan Ashley being named Chairman of the evening. Our congratulations to the team on such a wonderful performance.
