On a wet and blustery day last month, I took a team of five expert debaters to a Bellevue Inter Schools Debating Competition at The Priory Preparatory School close to Reading.
Our expert debaters included:
Alexander Westfield, Year 7
Irini and Natalie, Year 8
Poppy and Aliza, Year 9
The day started with the head to head pre-prepared debating round showcasing the Webber students' excellent research (opposing the idea that more money should be given to space exploration), persuasive skills and inventive, well timed rebuttals.
Webber decisively won this first round but unfortunately, were not victorious in the second round despite their impressive performance!
Irini received a special mention as one of the day's overall strongest debaters and this was well deserved; she provided passionate, spirited and intellectually robust ideas and rebuttals (even speaking fluent Greek and referring to philosophers such as Aristotle and Nietzsche at points).
All in all, an inspirational, fun and rewarding day and the team enjoyed meeting like-minded students for across the 19 Bellevue schools and learning more about formal debating. There will be many more debating competitions in the future so do let me know if you would like to Carpe diem and join the team!
Mr Jolley
English