Hotly Debated

Year 6 students from Our Lady of the Angels, Rouse Hill recently faced off against students from their neighbouring school, Our Lady of the Rosary, Kellyville, in a tense debate.

Our Lady of the Angels students were pleased to be given the affirmative side of an interesting topic, “Mobile phones should be banned for primary school students”. In an era where it has become almost impossible to exist without a mobile phone, OLA students had a challenging debate ahead of them.

Armed with a host of well-researched facts about the negative impact of mobile phones on young children, including: being a distraction, being a tool for bullying; and lack of maturity in appropriate mobile phone use, the students did their school proud.

For those watching the debate it was difficult to tell that it was the team’s first debate. Students Georgia Nemitsas, Akeesha Gunasekara, Sienna Younes, Makiah Arora, and Charlotte Zahra proudly represented their school and demonstrated strong arguments and refutes on the day.

In recognition of the great work done by OLA’s debaters, Akeesha Gunasekara and Sienna Younes were given the Debating Star of the Week award at the end of Term Two. Sienna was recognised for the strength of her speech as third speaker, and the outstanding preparation she put into the debate.

Unfortunately, due to illness, Sienna was unable to deliver her speech, but her fellow teammate, Akeesha, rose to the challenge of presenting someone else’s speech and spoke confidently, doing her school and fellow teammate proud.

Our Lady of the Angels is lucky to have such a strong debating team prepared to challenge themselves and work together to do the best they can.