Year 10 MISA Public Speaking

On Friday 11 September, Molly Q and Grace K of Year 10 were proud to represent the College in the Macarthur Independent Schools Association’s Public Speaking Competition. This competition focuses on students delivering two speeches, with participants presenting a six minute prepared speech from a chosen list of topics and delivering a three minute impromptu speech with only two minutes to prepare.

Molly's prepared speech tackled the topic of “The Chosen One”. She took this opportunity to challenge our understanding of what it means to be labelled ‘gifted’ and how having the collective traits of giftedness impact young people. In her impromptu, Molly was given the topic ‘That words are our most inexhaustible source of magic’. Despite such a challenging topic, Molly spoke wonderfully, discussing the importance of reading and writing to our society.

Grace’s prepared speech was an interesting discussion of manipulation under the topic of 'Twenty-Six different ingredients.' She discussed the various circumstances in which manipulation is appropriate and damaging, highlighting the importance of raising awareness of manipulation tactics. Grace’s impromptu topic was ‘The Last Hurdle’. She took this opportunity to discuss the importance of perseverance when striving for our goals. 

While we are greatly proud of both students, we were not the lucky winners this year. That said, they have both made our school very proud and grew as speakers as a result of their hard work. A big thank you to Mr Duncan for his support of Miss Bryant and the St Patrick’s College public speaking community.

Year 7 and 8 MISA Round 5 Debate

We are proud to share that on Monday 7 September, our Year 7 and 8 MISA Debaters participated in their final debate of the MISA season against John Therry Catholic College. 

Our Year 7 squad, consisting of Eliza F, Orla B, Diadem A and Jamie M, debated the topic ‘That animals should be kept in zoos’ Our students argued the affirmative, stating that zoos provide economic, educational and animal welfare opportunities. Although our girls made us very proud, they were unfortunately not the winners of this debate. 

Our Year 8 squad, consisting of Renae L, Abby D, Olivia M and Hein J, affirmed the topic ‘That obesity is a matter of personal responsibility’, arguing that it is 'your body - your responsibility' Thanks to their superior ability to provide arguments relevant to the topic, our Year 8 squad won this debate. A big thank you to Mr Duncan for his support of Miss Bryant and the girls, and congratulations to our MISA debaters on finishing the season strong!

Laura Bryant - Debating and Public Speaking Coordinator