Poetry Out Loud: Evaluation Criteria

Recitations are judged on:

To receive higher marks for physical presence, students should try to:

• Use good posture
• Be confident
• Make a direct connection with the audience.
• Relax and be natural
• Enjoy their poems

Nervous gestures, poor eye contact with the audience, and lack of poise or confidence will detract from a student's score.

In a strong recitation, a student should show ease, comfort, and engagement with the audience through physical presence, including appropriate body language and confidence—without appearing artificial. 

This is an example of a recitation with strong physical presence:

To receive higher marks for voice and articulation, students should:

• Project to the audience. Try to capture the attention of people in the back row, but don’t yell.
• Speak at a natural pace. Don't rush, but don't speak too slowly.With rhymed poems, be careful not to recite in a sing-song manner.
• Know how to pronounce every word in the poem.
• Articulate.
• Decide whether a line break requires a pause and, if so, how long to pause.

In a strong recitation, students should pronounce all words correctly. Keep in mind that volume, rhythm, pacing and intonation greatly enhance the recitation. 

An example of a recitation with strong voice and articulation is:

To receive higher marks for dramatic appropriateness, students should:

• Rely on conveying the sense of the poem through its language, not through distracting dramatic gestures
• Not act out each word of the poem. 
• Let the words of the poem do the work.
• Use occasional gestures if appropriate. When uncertain, however, leave them out.
• Avoid monotone delivery.
• Avoid too much enthusiasm in the delivery.

In a strong recitation, the dramatization subtly underscores the meaning of the poem without becoming the focal point. A low score in this category will result from recitations that have affected character voices and accents, inappropriate tone and inflection, singing, distracting and excessive gestures, or unnecessary emoting.

An example of a recitation with strong dramatic appropriateness is: 

When assessing evidence of understanding, judges evaluate a student's comprehension and mastery of the poem. A student should be able to voice a poet's words in a way that helps the audience to understand the poem better. Students must effectively use intonation, emphasis, tone, and style of delivery.

A student should:

• Understand the poem fully.
• Be attentive to the messages, meanings, allusions, irony, tones of voice, and other nuances in the poem.
• Know the meaning of every word and line in your poem.
• Interpret the tone, volume, and voice of your poem.
  • Is it a quiet poem?
  • Is it a boisterous poem?
  • Should it be read more quickly or slowly, with a happy or mournful tone?

In a strong recitation, the student conveys powerfully and clearly the meaning of the poem to the audience. The student's interpretation should deepen and enliven the poem. A low score will be awarded if the interpretation obscures the meaning of the poem.

An example of a recitation with strong evidence of understanding is:

Some questions the judges will consider are:

• Did the student captivate the audience with the language of the poem?
• Did the student bring the audience to a better understanding of the poem?
• Did the student's physical presence, voice and articulation, and dramatic appropriateness all seem on target and unified to breathe life into the poem?
• Did the student understand and show mastery of the art of recitation?
• How complex was the poem?
• Did the student's recitation vary with each poem? 

A judge will mark missed or incorrect words during the recitation, with small deductions for each. If you rely on the prompter during your recitation, points will also be subtracted from your accuracy score. Eight points will be added to your score for a perfectly accurate recitation.