Research on writing over the past two decades has considerably changed our approach to writing. Rather than assigning a topic and then marking it with the red pen, a teacher/instructor now leads students/learners into the writing process. Students learn how to plan their writing through deciding on their purpose and message, their audience, and the information that they might use to make their point. Students then begin to compose their thoughts and express them in written language. While they are composing they may make changes in their thoughts and their choice of words to edit or polish it for spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Writing, in many instances, may not be evaluated. Whether it is evaluated depends on the purpose for writing and the audience. In the case of the Essay Writing Contest for Literacy Action Day, the purpose was to write on various topics regarding literacy and to participate in a contest with other writers.

A total of 885 essays were received.

The following three steps were followed in selecting the winners.

1. A Writing Evaluation Scale was developed with input from six professors of literacy across the country.
2. Essays were screened to provide a short list. This was done by a university professor, a retired teacher, and a university student.
3. The first, second, and third places were chosen from the short list. This was done by two university professors, two Department of Education of finials, and four retired teachers.

Directions: Rating Essays: Screening

Read the Criteria below and become familiar with them. Develop a picture in your mind of the kind of essay that would be rated high on these Criteria. Read each essay with this holistic picture in mind and sort into three groups: Short List, Not Included, and Possibly. Reread the group labelled Possibly and sort them into one of the other groups.

Directions: Rating Essays: Finalists

Read the Criteria below and become familiar with them. Have them available to refer to when necessary.

Please read each essay twice. First get an impression of the content. Think of the essay as part of the grade or age group to which it belongs and use that grade/age group as a referent in grading the essays. On the second reading, check the rating for each criteria and rank order the first five. (From these five, the first three places were chosen based on agreement across the evaluators.)