Sixth-graders at Riverview Middle School in Plymouth recently held a Greatest Person Speech Competition with sports-style brackets. The competition was the culmination of a month-long unit on great people throughout history, as part of the language arts and social studies curriculum. The sixth-graders began by reading a biography or autobiography about a famous individual and then formed a speech addressing two arguments about what made each person great. Students also had to identify each person's major flaw and try to defend it. A competition was set up with brackets inspired by March Madness, pitting famous people against each other in the categories of entertainment, humanities, leadership, sports, and science and technology. The entire class gathered April 16 to watch the final two in each category face off. All students dressed like their famous person for the assembly.
Winners of the 2014 Greatest Person Speech Competition were:
? Humanities: Alec Nicholson as Ghandi over Cami Schroeder as Martin Luther King Jr.
? Science and technology: Jacob Ashworth as Albert Einstein over Kyle Kraus as Bill Gates
? Entertainment: Dallas Kreisa as Annie Oakley over Amber Boetcher as Tim Burton
? Leadership: Cami Nicolaus as Christopher Columbus over Morgan Phipps as Madam C.J. Walker
? Sports: Kalani Smith as Pele over Elise Bleck as Kerri Strugg