Research Essay & Narrative Judges

2011 – 2012 Future City Competition

Judge’s Instructions

Research Essay & City Narrative

Thank you for your commitment or interest to serve as an essay/abstract judge for the 2011-2012 Future City Competition – Ohio Region. We are pleased you have agreed to evaluate the maximum 1,000 word essays and the maximum 500 word narratives.

The 1,000 word or less essay topic is “Fuel Your Future." Students will research and write an essay in which they choose one energy source and design a way to generate electric power for their city that does not deplete natural resources and has limited impact on the environment. The 500 word or less narrative is the team description of their future city and some of the services and important components in the city.

Distribution of the essays and abstracts for scoring is via email and occurs on or before December 26, 2011. Each judge will score three or four essay and narrative submissions. This year, once you have read the submissions, you will use the attached writable PDF rubrics to score each essay and narrative. For each team submission:

Save a copy of the writable .PDF for each team submission you were given.
For each team submission you have been given, fill in the following blanks on the writable .PDF document:

Judge’s Name
Future City Name:
School Name

Then score each team essay and narrative by marking a point subtotal for each of the twenty-five (25) criteria, making sure to total your points at the end. (It will not total all the scores for you.)
Save each completed writable .PDF as the team/school name. (Please do not use the City name. For example, a submission from St. Veronica School for the city “Futureville” should be saved as “StVeronicaSchool.pdf”.
Finally email me all your completed score sheets. Please email them to ohiofuturecity@gmail.com. Please note the address.

Please complete all scoring by Wednesday, January 11, 2012.

A few important and additional notes:

This year as in the previous year, the teams submitted their Essay, Narrative and References via email. A “Research Essay & Narrative Form” should accompany each submission but any deduction for not including it is no longer part of your scoring responsibilities as in years past. The Essay Coordinators will be responsible for deductions if a school has not submitted (-2 points).
Any deductions for word counts over the stated maximums are also now no longer part of your scoring responsibilities. The Essay Coordinators will be responsible for deductions if a school has gone over the stated maximums (-10 points).
This year, the teams are allowed a maximum of four (4) graphs, charts, or images that may be included in the submission. Going over the maximum is now a criteria on the rubric for you to score. Note, the words associated with the images will be counted in the word total and the teams have been made aware of this.
Please use judgment if they have the correct number of references and if there is enough information included in their reference cited. We should NOT accept just a website address or just a name of an article for instance for correct reference citations. Wikipedia is also not accepted and the teams have been made aware of this.

For additional information on this year’s research essay, go to http://www.futurecity.org/essay/overview. There you can find additional links and information regarding the essay. For additional information on this year’s narrative, go to http://www.futurecity.org/narrative/overview. There you can find additional links and information regarding the narrative.

In addition, a .PDF copy of the Judge’s Manual is attached below. Information on your role as a judge begins on page 3 with information about the essay beginning on page 10 and information about the narrative beginning on page 15.

We hope that the new writable .PDF forms that you will be using make scoring just as easy as in years past, if not easier. We also feel that this also gives you the judge a copy of your work in case there are any problems with electronic delivery, etc.

If you have any concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail us at ohiofuturecity@gamil.com.

Sincerely,

Daniel J. Becker & Heidi Hetzel Evans

Future City Competition – Ohio Region Co-Essay Coordinators

Resource (File Download):