By Callum Ludwig
The Rotary Club of Wandin held their inaugural Primary Schools Speech Competition on Thursday 20 July with a few local schools sending their students to participate.
The event was also supported by Wandin Toastmasters, the local arm of the public speaking and leadership organisation.
Peter Johnson organised the event while he was the Youth Chair at the Rotary Club of Wandin before a recent reshuffling of roles and said it went very well.
“We invited five schools, unfortunately, Seville Primary School had to pull out at the last minute so we had the two Wandin schools (Wandin North and Wandin Yallock), Woori Yallock and Coldstream,” he said.
“The youth committee within Wandin Rotary is very involved with the schools though other initiatives like the Junior Citizen award, so it was a great experience for me personally to be dialoguing with principals and making this come to fruition.”
Speech competitions, often the four-way-test variety, are held by Rotary Clubs for primary and high school students across the state.
Mr Johnson said they were very impressed with the students.
“I think we have eight schools, primary schools in the area, so we’ll be inviting the other schools and see how we go in the future, we presented a perpetual shield so that’s an indication we’re keen to continue in the years to come,” he said.
“We had comments from a couple of the teachers that this is a very important thing for students to be able to partake in and practise as they go into life further on down the track.”
Wandin North Primary School’s Grade 6 Students Charlie Glenn and Patrick Armstrong had the honour of taking out first prize in the very first edition of the competition.
Wandin North Primary School Principal Paul Bailey said public speaking is a life skill, and it is crucial to provide numerous opportunities at different stages of schooling.
“This was the first experience for the selected students to participate in a competition such as this with strict time conditions and an experienced judging panel. For the students to stand up in front of a large number of unfamiliar faces, in an unfamiliar setting and read their speeches was outstanding,” he said.
“The topics of ‘Kindness’ and ‘How We Can Change The World’ were passion projects. The content in both speeches had a number of persuasive techniques such as research, repetition, emotive language and rhetorical questions to engage the audience. I was an extremely proud principal sitting there watching the children representing Wandin North Primary School.”
The Rotary Club of Wandin’s very active role in supporting local schools includes their Junior Citizen Award, donations such as microscopes, community libraries and bags of apples and helping support kids taking part in ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day services.
