The whole of Year 7 came off timetable for the afternoon last Tuesday for our 3rd annual Litfest competition. This was the culmination of several weeks’ work. The English department picked the theme of heroes which linked up with the Year 7 core skills project. The competitions were to write a poem on the subject of heroes, a ‘nifty fifty’ 50 word story on the same subject or to read out a piece of literature to entertain the audience. Students were also able to enter the spelling bee, which involved standing up and spelling really tricky words in front of everyone – not an easy thing to do and those who took part were fantastic. The crowd really got behind those on stage and after a very close run final the competition was eventually won by Siddharth Muthu Pandian.

As well as our own Litfest competition, students were given the opportunity to enter the One World Centre’s poetry slam. We had eight teams who entered this year with the topics being serious issues such as climate change, child labour, people on the move and making a difference. Again, this was a closely fought contest, with the top three teams going through to compete in the island wide competition in September against teams from the other secondary schools. The winning team were Poppy Knox, Tessie Clynes, Juliana Kopacz and Grace Gerrard who gave a spirited performance which was really entertaining to watch.

It was a very enjoyable afternoon and both Year 7 and their teachers worked really hard to make it a success. Well done everyone!