Tillie's Junior Speaks Experience
My Junior Speaks Experience
When I was chosen for Junior Speaks, I was not expecting it at all. I was excited that I was friends with the people on the team. We all had a role as part of the team: Martha was the main speaker; Emile was the proposer of the vote of thanks; Josh was the team captain and I was the chairman. Lots of hard work was put into the speech. Our speech was about gender inequality in sport. I introduced the speech. Playtimes and worships were filled with practices and we even practised in front of the whole of KS2! The Junior Speaks team was the first ever team I have been on in school.
On the 9th October, the Peter Hoddinot Junior Speaks competition was finally happening. The venue was at Our Lady’s Primary School in Aspull. We were the 3rd team performing. When we got our leaflets that had the order of the schools, Emile immediately pointed out that Our Lady’s had 3 teams! We all shared a look of confusion and asked Miss Diamond why they had 3 teams. Miss Diamond said it was because they were hosting the competition. Many schools were involved; even our friends Saint David’s of Haigh. All of the speeches were completely different: knife crime; the homeless; disabilities; financial education; mental health and wellbeing. Our speech went very well. So well that we won! The only thing that went wrong was when Emile was meant to summarise the question that Martha was asked. The question was “What is the main reason for gender inequality in sport? When Emile had to summarise the question he said “Should men and women be on social media together?” We all thought that that would bring us down.
Before we found out the results, we ate toast. While we were eating our toast, a pupil from Aspull Church Primary came up to us and told us we did an amazing speech. We thanked her; I was very shocked that one of our competitors would congratulate us for our hard work. When we won, I put my hands over my mouth and looked at Erin. We all stood up and went to the front ecstatic that we won.
On Thursday 7th November (a few weeks after the competition) the Speaks team and I went to the Owls for lunch with the Rotary Club to celebrate our success. When we got there, I was not expecting there to be so many Rotarians.
When we sat down, I was on a table with Erin and Martha. For starters, we had vegetable soup; it was my favourite. Everybody else loved it too! For our main course, we had turkey dinner. Martha was so fond of the potatoes that she had one whole tray of small potatoes to herself! Once Martha had finished her potatoes, we did a toast to the Queen. I was not very fond of my dessert. It was marmalade cake with custard; the only thing I enjoyed about my dessert was the custard, but they didn’t give me enough of it!
After desserts, it was time to present our speech to the Rotary Club members. It went very well. We were presented with a badge of a man tearing apart his T-shirt. Once it was all over we had our picture taken. On the way back to school, Mrs Fletcher asked Erin and me what was on the badge. Erin replied with a man ripping his T-shirt and the Rotary Club logo. Martha thought that Erin said that she saw a man tearing apart his T-shirt. We all burst out into laughter. What made it even more hilarious was that it was raining outside; it would be very odd to see somebody ripping apart their shirt in the pouring rain. Once we arrived back at school, we went back into class but were soon pulled out of class again to write up a recount of our experience. This was an amazing experience I would love to do it again.
Visit our 'Junior Speaks' page to read the speech and see competition photographs.
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