Brentwood Preparatory School Incipe 2017-18

Brentwood School Preparatory 34 Don’t gobblefunk around with words, Roald Dahl, The BFG House Public Speaking In March, the Year Six children were asked to write a speech for a public speaking competition. We were given a variety of titles to choose from. I decided to write about ‘If I ruled the world’. Our teacher chose eight people to be put forward to their house captains. I was chosen to represent my house, and had to read aloud, on stage, in front of approximately 300 people! All of us were hoping that we would not let down our house and that we would not become flustered or scared once we were on stage. What a stage it was! Bare and very large with a dusty floor and large lights, high above our friends and the teachers. And so the contest began... I wasn’t very keen to speak in front of so many people but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Mr Prideaux hosted the competition and was a great help in giving us confidence. Mr Whiskerd and Mr Murley, head of public speaking in the senior school, were the judges. The winning house was Bayman and the overall winner was my friend Jonathan. I am really pleased that my friend won and I think he will make a great politician when he is older! All I ever seem to do is learn lessons: Maths, English, Mandarin (isn’t that a type of orange?). Even Mrs Dedman’s RE lessons, which I have to say are the most interesting, well thought out, and amazing lessons this school has ever seen. Mr Whiskerd - take note! But this isn’t about that type of lesson. This is about something important I have learned in the last week. Let me tell you how it started. All Year Sixes got the email - write a speech, it said. 3 - 4 minutes it said. Easy topics. Simple, right? Wrong. And I can tell you: I’ve tried them all. Let me explain. On day one I started thinking about a person from the past I would like to meet. Topic 1. Easy - Churchill! And he could give me speech writing tips. Actually I could just copy a speech - “we will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them on the landing grounds, we shall never surrender!” Job done. So as a reward to myself, I sat down and watched 10 hours of war documentaries. So much for Saturday. I told Mrs Dedman, and even she recognised that I had copied Winston’s speech. Maybe if I hadn’t used my pen as a cigar, she wouldn’t have noticed. Anyway, apparently there’s this thing where you can’t copy someone else’s work: she calls it “plagiarism”. So on Sunday I decided to try topic 2: what I would do if I ruled the world. Simple! Free chocolate for everyone! As a reward for coming up with such a cool topic, I ate everyone’s free chocolate, felt sick and spent the day in bed. This brought me to the third topic. Real learning doesn’t happen in a classroom. On Monday, I learned that having too much chocolate makes you sick. And I was nowhere near a classroom for that. I was going to write something on Tuesday about tidying my room (topic 4), but Mrs Dedman interrupted me. I asked her why I had to tidy my room, and she said “because I said so.” Not much to give a speech about there either. On Wednesday I started to write about why homework should be banned. Topic 5. Simple: because it’s boring, pointless and stops me watching TV. Can’t stretch that out for three minutes. Thursday went by far too quickly. I spent most of the day thinking about why I should obey my parents. I decided that I probably shouldn’t, especially since Mrs Dedman kept irritatingly telling me to do my speech. So much for Topic 6. And so I came to topic 7: School uniforms. We all know that school uniforms are itchy, grey and smell like wet dog in the rain. There was no way I was going to write about that, not on a sunny Friday in half term. There was a fly on the wall of my bedroom on Saturday. I did wonder what it would be like to be a fly on the wall in Mr Whiskerd’s office. Topic 8. But since I have never had the pleasure of being a fly, or going into Mr Whiskerd’s office, this was a bit difficult. So instead I chased the fly round my room with a lightsaber. The last topic: Being young is overrated. Face it, it’s true. School, lessons, homework, and writing speeches in half term. No fun whatsoever. Scrap that one. And now half term is over, and we’re back at school. And this is the most important lesson of my life so far: don’t leave your speech writing to the last minute. The most important lesson of my life so far...