Our rubric is taken from the National Recitation Poetry Contest called Poetry Out Loud.
Click here to see all rubric criteria explained and demonstrated in videos.
Rubric Criteria 1: PHYSICAL PRESENCE
Eye contact, body language, and poise.
Tips:
- Present yourself well and be attentive. Use good posture. Look confident.
- Use eye contact with the entire audience. Don’t focus solely on the judges.
- Nervous gestures, poor eye contact with the audience, and lack of poise or confidence will detract from your presence.
- Relax and be natural. Enjoy your poem—the judges will notice.
Qualities of a strong recitation:
Ease and comfort with the audience. Engagement with the audience through physical presence, including appropriate body language, confidence, and eye contact—without appearing artificial.Rubric Criteria 2: VOICE AND ARTICULATION
Volume, pace, rhythm, intonation, and proper pronunciation.Tips:
- Project to the audience. Capture the attention of everyone, including the people in the back row. However, don’t mistake yelling for good projection.
- Proceed at a fitting and natural pace. Avoid nervously rushing through the poem. Do not speak so slowly that the language sounds unnatural or awkward.
- With rhymed poems or songs, be careful not to recite in a sing-song manner.
- Make sure you know how to pronounce every word in your poem. Articulate.
- Line breaks are a defining feature of poetry. Decide whether a break requires a pause and, if so, how long to pause.
Qualities of a strong recitation:
All words pronounced correctly, and the volume, rhythm, and intonation greatly enhance the recitation. Pacing appropriate to the poem.POETRY MEMORIZATION
For the rest of class, work on memorizing your poem.
Some tips on memorization:
* Know what every word and line means and think of it in phrases.
*Chunk the information into sections.
*Memorize it backwards, line by line.
HW: Study and memorize your poem. Make sure that you can correctly say every word and you know what each line means.
