Kentucky Youth Storytelling
Judging Rubric
**Judging accommodations will be made as needed to judge tellers fairly. (e.g. tellers who are blind; tellers who use ASL; tellers with limited mobility; tellers with speech impediments). Please use the entry form to alert KSA to your need.
* “Unintentional Mispronunciations” – what do we mean by that? Words that are pronounced incorrectly.
However -- While pronunciation is important in the “Articulation & Pronunciation” category, some storytellers may be learning English or may speak with a regional accent or dialect; these storytellers are not penalized. In some stories a character’s mispronunciations reveal important information about the character. A teller might spoonerize a story. These would be intentional mispronunciations.
Understanding & Using the Judging Rubric
How is the rubric organized?
- The first vertical column in the rubric, printed in bold, lists the various categories judges will observe and provides a space for judges to write in a score from 1 – 4 for each category.
- The other vertical columns correspond to storytelling levels: Beginning, Developing, Proficient, and Advanced. If you read down a vertical column, you can read the common attributes of a storyteller at a specific level – Beginning, Developing, etc. If you read across a horizontal row, you can read how storytelling skills in each category change as a teller progresses from Beginning to Advanced level storytelling.
- A semicolon “;” means or. For example: In the first category “Rate of Delivery” in the Beginning vertical column, you’ll see the following: “Pacing too fast; Pacing too slow; Ineffective pauses.” The presence of any of these attributes results in the telling being judged Beginning.
- A bold “and” means everything connected by the “and” must be present. For example: In the “Volume” category, you’ll notice that the Advanced level includes the same attribute as the Proficient level and an additional attribute. Both must be present for a telling to be judged Advanced.
How do I use the rubric when judging?
- Match what you observe with the rubric by highlighting the matching portions of the rubric so tellers will have feedback on what judges observe. For example: In the first category “Rate of Delivery” if the teller speaks too slowly, highlight “Pacing too slow” so teller will know what you observed.
- Scoring – Assign a score from 1 – 4 for each scoring category, based on the portion of the rubric that matches your observations. For example: in the first category “Rate of Delivery” if you highlighted “Pacing too slow” you assign a score of 1, because “Pacing too slow” is in the “Beginning” column which always means a score of “1”.
- When a telling contains attributes of more than one level, your score should reflect that in-between nature. For example: In the category “The Story” if “Images are clear” but there are still “Minor flaws in transitions or sequencing, but not enough to limit understanding” the score for “The Story” category would be 3.5 because the telling contained attributes of both Proficient 3 and Advanced 4 level storytelling in that category. (Note: See #4 above about the meaning of “and” in the Advanced level.)