The Judges Report Back

Each panel of judges reports back to the whole group. Occasionally I ask a panel to say why they made the award, especially if I know they have had a good discussion. If nearly every panel makes the same award to one piece of writing, I might take a minute to look at the piece again: “Oh, so many medals for the ending of this piece. Let’s look at the last part again to see why so many judges thought it deserved a medal.”

Individual Favourite Sentences

After every panel of judges has reported on the medal they gave, I ask each learner to read their favourite sentence aloud to the large group.

The reading of individual favourite sentences continues to be important. It ensures that every learner has to make an individual assessment of what is good, even if they don’t participate much in the medal-giving discussion or if they can’t make their choice prevail. Sometimes a learner with strong opinions finds that others on the panel will not agree with them. They want to give the medal for the beginning, but all the other learners think the ending is the best thing about the piece. In that case the learner can go along with the small group about the medal, but read the first sentence as their favourite sentence in the large group, and perhaps add their reasons at that time.

When everyone has read their favourite sentence, it’s time to move on to the next piece of writing.