Year 8 pupils Maryam and Annabel recently won medals at the Watford Festival of Music, Speech and Drama.

Both competing in the Verse Speaking Set Poems category, Maryam won silver and Annabel won bronze.

We caught up with Maryam to learn more about their experiences in the competition.


This year was the second time taking part in the Watford Festival. We were given a list of 3 poems to choose to recite- one about school, one about the eeriness of nature and one about malicious cats and had been working on them since the beginning of the year.

We deeply analysed the poems making sure we understood them well to give the best performance we could.

Whilst we were waiting for the event to begin, it was tense and we were quite nervous, however we knew that we were well prepared and once we were on stage all of our fears disappeared and we managed to give great performances.

Overall, it was a fun and exciting experience, and we are very happy with our prizes!


Congratulations to Maryam and Annabel on their remarkable achievements, Well done!