Moving on up in The Mace

THE  MACE DEBATING COMPETITION

Written By: Miss Pellegrini

The Mace competition is a national debating competition and each year St. Angela’s enters the London heat. On 17^th November Samantha Aidoo (year 13) and Amifa Tholley (year 12) represented the school. They proposed the motion “This House Would Not Fund Single Faith Schools”. Basically, they were arguing that schools like St. Angela’s should not exist!

The competition was held at City of London Girls School, which is situated in the middle of the Barbican. It was a nerve- wracking event for all involved and we knew that the other schools were going to be impressive. There were six schools in this round and most of them have a long history of debating.

However, Samantha and Amifa were calm and rose magnificently to the occasion. They showed that they are skilled in the art of debating and are able to “think on their feet”. It was a close contest but we are through to the second round, as are St. Bon’s. We are all extremely proud of this achievement.

Creative Writing Group

This creative writing group began three weeks ago, and is open to all year groups. It is held every Wednesday at lunchtime and is a great place to share work and receive a professional opinion by Miss. Maidment of the English department who gives up her own free time to run the creative writing group.

Every week we are set a task, which is not compulsory to complete. It helps students to structure their writing and receive comments on how they can improve.

We also share ideas and recommend particular authors that we think are good and also believe that everyone else should enjoy.

Nancy Harrington

10 Westwood

The Mace: Round 2

Written By:Amifa Tholley

Your mind’s going over and over the words, you can’t sit still because you’re too nervous and you’re constantly sipping at a bottle of water. Oh my gosh, look how many people there are!

No, you’re not about to sing or dance or perform a piece of stand up comedy. You’re about to debate in front of judges from the American National Debating team, your friends, teachers and even people you have never seen before.

This is a close description of how I, and I am sure, my debating partner Samantha Aidoo (year 13), felt on the evening of Monday 2^nd February. Sam and I (with Miss Pellegrini’s and Mr. Szwaba’s help) had been preparing for the second round of the Mace Debate on and off for about two weeks.

The motion we were given was “This house would relieve third world debt”. Sam and I was to propose the motion and therefore open the debate. St. Angela’s was hosting the competition which meant that five other schools from around London, both private and state schools, were coming to Forest Gate.

 The evening began with a few refreshments and then everyone was seated. Lee-Ann Richards (year 13) welcomed everyone and began the first debate. Noelle Griffin (year 12) was timekeeper for the evening. Second to debate was St. Angela’s who were against Eaglesfield School.

 Once all the debates were finished, around 8:30pm, everyone waited in the sixth form canteen, while the judges went out to come to a decision.

 Did you win? I hear you ask. Well, no, but we did come a very close second

so we were very pleased and proud!

We Love Reading!

Written By:Aysha Johnston

These days it seems that children no longer read books. With all the new modern technology we have today, it seems that books are a thing of a past.

However, Miss DeLuca’s KS3 classes are proving this wrong by having a reading competition. Our objective is to read lots of books and the person who reads the most in each class wins!

The winner will get a certificate which will be received in the end of term assembly along with a mystery prize.

The winner in our year 7 class is Anthea Kwarteng. She said, “I feel very proud and happy to be winning the reading competition; I have never won anything like this before.”

The reading competition is encouraging people who don’t like to read books to pick one up. It is also growing our passion for the written word and building our vocabulary.

The reading competition has been loads of fun and in total the girls have read over 100 novels!!!