FOCUS

4

3

2

1

CREATIVITY

4

3

2

1

Totally creative, unusual, unexpected, many ideas

Partly creative, some unusual, unexpected

Commonplace, some imagination

Commonplace, unimaginative, totally predictable

ACHIEVES PURPOSE/IMPACT

4

3

2

1

Powerful impact or force, catches attention, no distraction, impressive effect, strong sense of audience, control of message

Moderate impact or force, Some sense of audience but not entirely focussed

Minimal impact or force, sense of audience not evident

Listing of events

VOCABULARY

4

3

2

1

Unusual, exciting, variety, use of synonyms

Variety of word choice, use of synonyms

Commonly used words, limited use of synonyms

Commonly used words, much repetition

ORGANIZATION/COHERENCE

4

3

2

1

Good topic development, good balance between major and minor ideas, ideas closely related, no vague or out of sequence statements, good use of connective words

Good topic development, minor statements dominate, ideas not all closely related, maybe some sequence problems, commonplace connective words

Topic development not strong, ideas tend to be parallel, and separate lacking appropriate connective words

Overall sense of development not clear; ideas tend to be randomly arranged

SENTENCE STRUCTURE/COHESION

4

3

2

1

Variety of sentence structures, embedded ideas, elaboration good use of references

Variety of sentence structures, few embedded ideas, elaboration, weak, some referential connections

Variety of sentence structures

Mainly simple sentences

MECHANICS (Spelling, Grammatical Usage, Punctuation, Capitalization)

4

3

2

1

All correctly used

Only unusual words misspelled, or errors in less common use of punctuation, capitalization, grammatical usage

Spelling errors in commonly used words, or errors in common use of punctuation, capitalization, grammatical usage

Errors interfere with reading of content