Thanks to James for this…

The local round of Youth Speaks, a national public speaking competition for schools, sponsored and organised by Abingdon Rotary Club, took place last Friday at Steventon Village Hall.

Four Abingdon schools took part, Abingdon, Larkmead, Our Lady’s and St Helen and St Katherine. Three of these schools fielded both an intermediate and a senior team, with Abingdon School fielding just a senior team.

Each team consisted of three speakers, an introducer, a main speaker and a summariser. Topics were varied, including the search for aliens, dementia, body building and the limits to our knowledge.

The winners of the intermediate category were Larkmead whose team gave a very amusing presentation on the subject of body language, with many demonstrations.

The senior category was won by the team from St Helen and St Katherine. They gave a most informative and moving presentation on the subject of female health issues in the third world.

Abingdon Rotary Club President, Chris Ronaldson, awarded the prizes, and the winning teams will take part in the next round which takes place in Witney on the 28th January.

In the windows of Abingdon Library are some over sized medals, made from old vinyl records – put there as part of this summer’s reading challenge.

The badly scratched records were donated by Oxfam in Abingdon, and the artwork added by students at Larkmead school, to encourage children to come into the library and take part in this summer’s reading challenge.

Read six books from the library during the summer holidays, and become a Record Breaker!

This evening the Fitzharrys Art Show at Abingdon Community Shop was opened by Deputy Mayor Cllr Alice Badcock, and sister.

I am sorry to have missed the opening but got a quick look after hours.

The exhibition is only on for three days so go along if you can.

The staff video to say goodbye to Year 11 students, after all their hard work on GCSEs, has recently been gaining a lot of attention, with over 12,000 YouTube views, and also stories in the Herald and Oxford Mail and interest from Meridian News.

Sports Day is tomorrow (9th July), and the annual talent show (10th July). So a busy end of term.

Since John Mason opened in 1961, many thousands of students have come and gone, and all of them have gained years of valuable life experience through a multitude of careers. The school is hoping that some of the ex-students might be willing to use their experience to help current students. This might be through online mentoring, visiting to speak to students, offering work experience placements, or many other possible contributions.

They would love ex-students to sign up to their new John Mason School Alumni Network. It could to receive the occasional newsletter, or a reunion event. However, you can also say whether or not you’d be willing to help further.

Ex-students can sign up online via a website: formerstudents.johnmasonschool.org or by the “Sign up” link on the new John Mason School Alumni Network Facebook page.

This project is being carried out in collaboration with Future First, a charitable organisation which helps school set up alumni groups and engage former students. Their video shows how a similar project works at another school: https://youtu.be/1vWhzT4T9ys

(Thanks to Friends Reunited for the pictures of ex-students of John Mason School.)