Judges at all levels of competition must judge recitations based on the official Poetry Out Loud evaluation criteria, for in-person and virtual contests. For more detailed information about these criteria, please refer to the Judge’s Guide.
For a classroom contest or a local contest with an area organization, the teacher or organizer may serve as the sole judge. Another teacher, administrator, or volunteer can fill the role of the accuracy judge. At the school finals, three judges plus an accuracy judge should be sufficient—a group of teachers may serve as judges, or you may invite some community members to judge the contest. Appropriate judges might be local poets, actors, professors, arts reporters, politicians, or members of the school board. Judges should have some knowledge of poetry, although they need not be experts. Be sensitive to conflicts of interest—actual or perceived—with your judging panel. Make sure to choose judges who will conscientiously prepare for their roles in advance.
For in-person contests, print the evaluation sheets before the school contest, and fill in the names of the participants and the titles of the poems. For virtual contests, fill in the evaluation sheet PDFs with the names of participants and titles of the poems. Have these in the order of recitation before the competition, with one set for each judge.
Prepare the judges in advance:
- Send them the students’ poems ahead of time so they are familiar with them. No judge other than the accuracy judge should be following along with the text during recitations.
- Send them a copy of the Judge’s Guide, and invite them to view the Webinar for Judges. Ask judges to familiarize themselves with the evaluation criteria and scoring rubric. Invite judges to ask questions and schedule an orientation or conference call prior to the contest so all judges have consistent scoring advice.
- Remind judges to score each category independently and to watch the student, and not the score sheet, while judging.
- Encourage them to view the video examples of student recitations on the Poetry Out Loud website and the Poetry Out Loud YouTube channel; they should practice scoring these before the competition. This will give judges a sense of the structure and pacing of a competition.
During the competition:
- For in-person contests, separate the judges a bit from the rest of the audience so they are not distracted. Judges should not have any interaction with the contestants or the audience until after the competition has ended.
- Judges must not convene to discuss their scores—they should rate recitations independently and then immediately turn in their evaluation sheets. This practice not only keeps the contest moving, but also ensures that judges are scoring independently, based on merit only. Warn judges that they will not be able to revisit scores after they turn them in.
- After each recitation, the score tabulator or an assistant will collect the completed contest evaluation sheets. The accuracy judge’s score will be added to each evaluation sheet as scores are tabulated. Scoring is cumulative; the scores from each round should be totaled to determine the winner.
Accuracy Judge
Assign a separate person to serve as an accuracy judge. The accuracy judge will mark missed or incorrect words during the recitation. For in-person contests, print out the accuracy score sheets before the contest, and fill in the names of the participants and the titles of the poems they will recite. For virtual contests, fill out the names of participants and titles of the poems in the PDFs. Have these in the order of recitation before the competition, and give one set to the accuracy judge. The accuracy judge will also need a notebook or PDF with a large-font copy of each poem, in the order of recitation, so they may follow along with recitations and assign accuracy scores. The accuracy score is added to the contest evaluation sheet of each judge.
Resources
- Webinar for Judges
- Accuracy Score Sheet (PDF)
- Contest Evaluation Sheet (PDF)
- Evaluation Criteria and Tips (PDF)
- Prompter Instructions (PDF)
- Digital Contest Evaluation Sheet (Excel File)
- Digital Accuracy Score Sheet (Excel File)
- Digital Score Sheet Instructions (PDF)
- Scoring Rubric (PDF)