Speech Contest

Last week grades 3 to 6 participated in an English speech contest. I was, of course, unaware of it until the day before I was meant to judge it, and so I was surprised at the amount of work the students had put into it! Clearly, they had had time to prepare and so must have known about it much earlier.

Thursday we judged 3rd and 4th grade, and then the 5th and 6th graders competed Friday afternoon. Unfortunately I only had my camera with me on the first day, so my pictures are limited to the younger students.

Each of the 4 English teachers, myself included, got a copy of the speeches and a little grading rubric to fill out for each one. The grading categories included "Perfection & Content," "Pronunciation & Intonation," and "Confidence & Attitude." Personally, I had a hard time deciding how many points to give each of them in the "Perfection" category, especially because most of the students had memorized stories rather than writing their own speech. Ms An gave me a tip before they started that I should just decide who is 1st, 2nd, 3rd and then fill in the points later! I thought this was crazy, but there were no breaks between speeches and it was soon clear that I would not have time to think about the points! In the end, I don't think I contributed much to the final decision of who was "best" but I was really stunned by the abilities of my youngest students. They all memorized at least a page of English text and some of them were really entertaining!

"City mouse and country mouse"

3rd and 4th grade participants

(You can tell who got help from their parents, though! Those cheaters!)

This student won the 3rd grade category. I have no idea where she got the banner from but her mom was hovering out in the hallway with her nose pressed up against the window for the whole speech. 

I really wanted these students to win because they were so dang adorable. They reenacted a summary of the Little Mermaid and then sang this song in closing. Too cute! (Also, I was shocked they told the original version of the story where the mermaid has to kill the prince in the end or else turn into foam! Telling such a dark fairy tale and then following it up with this song was a brilliant juxtaposition that was probably lost on them...)