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MoTIoN CARRIED! A yEAR IN ThE SENIoR DEBATE ClUB
I can honestly say debate club
has been a wonderful experience
this year. For those of you who
don’t know how debate club
functions, I’ll summarise it
briefly. Every week, two debates
with 4 debaters each are held.
The debaters are split into two
teams (proposition and opposi-
tion) and are asked to debate
about a motion selected by me
(for example, this house believes
abortion should be banned). This
gives the debaters the wonderful
opportunity to develop their
skills in teamwork, research,
public speaking, debating and in-
dependent thinking. The de-
baters are then giving a score out
of 100 by the judges (Mr. Corkhill, Mrs. Mason and myself) and ranked accordingly against each
other.
The rankings are used for two purposes. Firstly, for the school’s internal competition. Top of
the rankings were Myrto Colocassides in 1st place, Christina Agroti in 2nd place and Zoe Kassi-
nis in 3rd place. The top 16 debaters were then asked to debate again the semifinals. The finals,
held between the top four debaters form the semifinals, to be held on Friday the 30th of March,
will determine the final winners of the school competition.
Secondly, the rankings were used to select the debate team which will be sent to Lithuania to
represent both our school and Cyprus at the World Individuals Public Speaking and Debate
Competition. The team that has been selected consists of 8 debaters; Zoe Kassinis, Lena
Christodoulides, Orla Hadjisophocleous, Stephanie Georgiou, Marita Anastasi, Yiolanti Maou,
Sophia Colocassides and Eftychia Constantiou. They have been working hard, training in both
debate, persuasive speaking (a competition where they must prepare and present a speech on
a topic of their choice over 10 minutes long) and interpretive reading (a competition where the
debaters must read from a passage of their choice). They have also practiced impromptu speak-
ing – a speech of 3 to 5 minutes on an unseen topic. They have constantly impressed me during training sessions and I am sure they will
do very well. I wish them the best of luck!
For those of you that haven’t yet experienced debate club, I highly recommend you give it a try next year. This year we had over 80 partic-
ipants and I’m sure all will tell you it was a highly enjoyable and educational experience. On a personal level, it has benefited me greatly in
terms of skills development and well as given me the opportunity to meet many wonderful new people; I am very thankful to Mr. Corkhill
and Mrs. Mason for allowing me to be president this year and also for guiding me over the past three years. It is an experience I am sure I
will never forget.
Alexia Michaelides, President Se ior D bate Society 2013 - 2014
GREEK lITERATURE ClUB
“For those of you that
haven’t yet experienced de-
bate club, I highly recom-
mend you give it a try next
year. This year we had over
80 participants and I’m
sure all will tell you it was
a highly enjoyable and
educational experience”
Alexia in the centre, pictured with the ES debate team in Calgary, Canada in
october 2012, with her second place prize for 'Persuasive Speaking’
on Saturday, 1st March, two year 7 students, Alexandra Krstic and Seta Astreou-
Karides, visited the Cypriot poet Costas Kalotaris together with Dr Polyviou,
and they had a very interesting interviewwith him about poetry and art, the fu-
ture of modern civilisation, immortality and death. The whole interview has
been published in the Blog of the Modern Greek literature Club http://modern-
greekliteratureclub.blogspot.com/
The We Care We Help Club was been recognised for its charity activiy with
an award by the Cyprus Volunteerism Association. The awarding ceremony
took place on Friday 14 February 2014 during a dinner offered by the Nicosia
Coordinative Council for Volunteerism at the Pavilion. The award was re-
ceived by two of our members, Georgina Hadjifrangiskou 5Y and Christie
Jordanou 5Y.
It is worth mentioning that this has been the only school club so far that has
been recognised in this way by the Volunteerism Association. It is an honour
indeed for our school and for each of us. As teachers in charge we would like
to thank you all once again for your generous support and constant encour-
agement throughout the last couple of years.
wE CARE wE hElP
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