Teacher’s Guide: Organizing the Contest Events

Download the complete Teacher’s Guide.

LEAD TEACHER(S)
We recommend that each school identify one or two teachers to serve as the coordinators of Poetry Out Loud. Duties for lead teachers will include enlisting fellow teachers to participate, distributing materials, organizing the school events, and keeping in touch with the state Poetry Out Loud coordinator.

Begin organizing your school event as early as possible in order to ensure greater attendance by the school community. Please see Publicity Tips for information on promoting the event within your school and community. Additional guidance, including sample press releases, can be found under Contest Promotion.

LENGTH OF CONTEST – SCHOOLS
Classroom contests can be held during class periods. A school’s final contest should run less than two hours; any longer than that can be difficult for the audience. Ideally, 6 to 15 students should compete in each school’s final contest. If your school has 6 to 15 classes participating in the program, send one winner from each class to the school finals. If fewer than 6 classes are participating, 2 students from each class may advance to the school finals. If more than 15 classes are participating, you might consider holding grade-level competitions first, allowing two or three students from each grade to advance to the school finals. In structuring your contest(s), keep in mind that each recitation takes approximately 3 to 4 minutes. Judges will require another minute to mark scores, yielding a rough average of 4 to 5 minutes per recitation.

NUMBER OF POEMS AT EACH CONTEST LEVEL
For the classroom contest, students must prepare at least one poem to recite. Participants in the school finals must prepare two poems for recitation. Students who advance to the state and national levels must have three poems prepared. Students will recite their poems in rounds, not consecutively, delivering one poem in each round. If the event will include a third round, it may consist of a smaller number of the highest-scoring competitors.

POEM SELECTION
Students must select poems from the official Poetry Out Loud print or online anthologies. Not all poems on the CD or DVD are eligible for recitation in Poetry Out Loud. Any poem in the printed anthology is eligible for competition even if it is not available online.

It is strongly recommended that students who compete beyond the classroom level select poems of various style, time period, and voice. Diversity in the selections will offer a richer and more complete performance. For the state and national competitions, students must select one poem of 25 lines or shorter and one poem written before the 20th century. The same poem may be used to meet both requirements.

Students must provide the names of their poems and the order in which they will be recited in advance to the contest coordinator. Students may not change their poem selections or order once they have been submitted. This will enable the coordinator to have copies of the poems collated for the judges and prompter, and contest evaluation sheets prepared.

VENUE
Reserve a school theater, auditorium, or other appropriate venue. The ideal setting will have a stage and theater-style seating. Competitors will stand alone on stage in front of the audience while reciting their poems. Other competitors may either be seated to the side of the stage or in the front row of the audience. Depending on the size of the venue, amplification may be appropriate.

STAFFING THE COMPETITION
At the school-wide competition, you will need volunteers to serve in a variety of roles:

Coordinator (1 or 2). The lead teacher(s) may be best suited for this role. The coordinator will ensure that the event runs smoothly, all volunteers are present, judges are briefed before the event, scoring is accurate, etc.

Emcee (1). An emcee will guide the competition from start to finish: providing welcoming remarks, introducing judges and students, and announcing winners. The emcee or the coordinator will need to keep an eye on the judges to make sure they have enough time to complete their scoring before the next student begins to recite. Since judges may need a minute between recitations to finish scoring and hand in their evaluation sheets, you may want to ask the emcee to entertain the audience or fill that time with biographical information about the poets or competing students (which you would need to have prepared). Another idea is to have music, live or recorded, between recitations.

Judges (3–5), accuracy judge (1). See Judging the Contest for advice on selecting judges.

Prompter (1). It is important to have someone following along with the recitations, ready to prompt a student who may get stuck on a line. Prepare a notebook with a large-font copy of each poem, in the order of recitation, for the prompter. Seat the prompter in the center of the front row, and have them follow along with the text as each student recites. Show the students where the prompter is sitting before the contest begins, so they know where to look if they get lost during their recitation. If a competitor is stuck for several seconds and looks to the prompter for help, the prompter may provide the next few words of the poem to get that student back on track.

Score tabulator (1–2). While the competition is taking place, someone should input the judges’ scores in a database so that no time is wasted totaling scores after the recitations are finished. An Excel spreadsheet works well for this purpose. A template is available on the website at www.poetryoutloud.org/teachers. It may be helpful if the tabulator has an assistant to collect the contest evaluation sheets.

Ushers. You may want to create a program for the event that lists the competitors and the poems they will be reciting, while also recognizing any local businesses that contributed to the contest. If so, plan on a few ushers to hand out programs.

INTRODUCING THE POEM
At the competition, the emcee should introduce each student as they come to the stage to recite. It is the student’s job to identify the poem by announcing both the title and the author. (For example, “‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree,’ by William Butler Yeats” or “‘The New Colossus,’ by Emma Lazarus.”) The poem must be recited from memory. Recitations must include epigraphs and stanza numbers if included in the Poetry Out Loud anthology, but a student’s own editorial comments before or after the poem are not allowed. Footnotes included with the poem in the Poetry Out Loud anthology should not be included in the recitation.

SAMPLE SCHEDULE
A typical school competition may look something like this, based on 10 students, an average recitation time of 3–4 minutes each, and 1 minute between recitations for scoring:

1:00 pm Welcoming remarks and introduction of the judging panel, prompter, and accuracy judge. Recognition of any sponsors. Recap of the evaluation criteria for judging the recitations.

1:05–2:25 Recitations, taking place in two rounds. In the first round, each student will recite their first poem. In the second round, each student will recite their second poem.

2:25 Five-minute intermission for scoring to be completed and winner and runner-up to be determined.

2:30 Announcement of winner and runner-up. Presentation of certificates and any prizes.

A certificate of participation is available at the Poetry Out Loud website at www.poetryoutloud.org/teachers. You may wish to solicit prizes from local businesses, if appropriate. Select a school champion as well as a runner-up. Depending on the guidelines of your state competition, one or both of these students may advance to the next level of competition. Please check with your state Poetry Out Loud coordinator.