Story Evaluation Rubric

InStory theEvaluation US, the initial target for Scriptive is homeschooling parents. Homeschooling is a direction taken for a number of reasons (more effective education, protection from influences, learning or cognitive challenges, physical or mental disabilities, etc.). In the US, one common reason is the desire to inculcate doctrines, religious principles and practices into daily learning. In India, Hinduism, Islam, and other religions value literature that teaches principles of morality and virtue. Scriptive and StoreLane needs to be sensitive and respectful to these needs.

Rubric

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• Due to considerthe innature of our platform (the text of the stories forwill WriteStoriesnot be seen, just the illustrations), it is crucial that ALL stories can generally be clearly discerned from just the childrenpictures needalone. toUnderstandable, sequential, engaging, concrete story plots. These stories should generate fun and engaging images that could easily help a child be able to have fun and figure outwrite a reasonablecreative storystory.  just from what they are seeing in the pictures alone - no dialogue, and not really expositing thinking either unless there is a clever way to do that in the pictures.

  
  

  Because of the above, Scriptive and StoryLane have developed the following rubric as points of consideration when evaluating a story for the platform.

  
  

  1. SlideOur audience age is approximately ages 7-12, with the 8-10 age range being our “golden” range. All stories should be geared towards this age range. Avoid stories that are too simple or too complex. 

  2. Transition from State A to State B: Are there discontinuitiesgaps in the storylinestory or characters that would beare hard to represent inshow just images?with Topictures? If the child,child theyis wouldfollowing bethe moving along getting to know charactersstory and situations, and thensuddenly things change,change andwithout theyexplanation, don't know why. Itit could be becausedue ofto unrepresentedmissing dialogue or some epiphanyideas that isare difficulthard to capture.show Example:visually. a child thinks through that if you combine clues 2 and 3, and combine that with 4 but ignore 1 that her father must be the one sneaking cookies at night.

  3. Universality: The books in WriteStories will be used in thevarious countrysideplaces andlike the city,countryside, incities, the US and inUS, India, and more to come.more. Fantasy is fine, and even learning new contextsthings are fine,okay, but if beingunderstanding the story depends on specific cultural knowledge or advanced concepts, there might be issues. For example, if your villain makes fake archeological artifacts or spreads false news to crash a company's stock, it could be hard for an 8-year-old or a 10-year-old to understand, especially with just simple pictures and no words. Being sensitive to a worldwide audience is very important. All stories should ideally be universal and be able to make sense of the sequence of illustrations depends on knowledge either cultural or more advanced than elementary school, there could be problems. Say, for instance, your villainused in theany storyculture makesif counterfeitspossible. of real archeological artifacts and sells them on the black market, or broadcasts fake bad news about a company to make the stock crash. Tricky for the 3rd grader in Chennai or the 4th grader in the US to track with, especially with simple pictures without words.

  4. Evil as Evil: Not all stories can or should be sunshine and unicorns. Conflict as part of the story arc can come from a number of sources (natural,natural or bad personal choices, .etc...), but sometimes people choose evil and that creates issues for characters having to deal with it.. It is ok, within elementary school-level reason, to depict evil in the story,story (also keeping in mind the age of the children - nothing too disturbing or above age-level appropriateness), but it needs to be portrayed as evil and not good,good or neutral. IfIt girlis 1 makes girl 2 upset because she goesimportant to schoolkeep in mind that any evil portrayed as evil in the lateststory fashionneeds andto isbe proudable becauseto ofbe it,clearly andshown atas the climax, girl 2 trips her and girl 1 fallssuch in the mud and girl 2 is the hero. That is returning evil for evil, and the evil is portrayedpictures as praiseworthy.well Anotheras commontext. problem is an 'ends justify the means' scenario. An example here might be that a child suspects their neighbor is stealing newspapers, so they break into his house to find a fingerprint to compare with one that they have.

  5. Misinterpreting Evil: The story may follow the Evil as Evil concept, but when itThis is renderedour justpublicly inshared pictures,statement itregarding mightour make evil look like good. For example, say Girl 1 wants the attentionlibrary of Boy,books. and asks Girl 2 to trip her in the hall when boy is close to get Boy's attention. This could easily be interpreted as Girl 2 is doing away with competition trying to get Boy attention as we don't know the planning conversation to set up the scene where Girl 2 is trying to help her friend. This could get worse if Boy gives attention to Girl 2 after Girl 1 has the embarrassing incident.

  6. Library Promise: Scriptive and StoryLane has a statement about library content that we give to teachers, parents, and guardians. One question we'll ask is 'How well doesDoes the story fitadhere theto promise?':this statement? 

  • Scriptive believes that books can have a profound influence on the lives and development of all of us, including our children. Because of this, Scriptive is very careful with what books are chosen for the Scriptive library and are vetted by our team of experts. Scriptive guarantees selections in our library to beare family-friendly and age age-appropriate.

  • As to content, there are also things that we actively seek. We enjoy books with powerful messages that teach kindness, respect, bravery, trustworthiness, helpfulness, cheerfulnesscheerfulness, and hard work. We enjoy beauty in writing and illustrations, positive messages, and wholesome fun.

  • However, there are things we actively stay away from. We avoid inappropriate and sexual content, and profane languagelanguage, and innuendos. We avoid stories that are disrespectful or have inappropriate behavior to any group or individual. We also stay away from political messaging.

VisibleCohesiveness: LegsThe tostory theshould Story:not Basically,depend inon WriteStories,dialogue childrenor needinternal toconflict. The story should be able to createbe a cohesive storydiscerned from the picturesvisible they are given. If the story depends on dialogue and understanding thoughts or feelings to understand, it might be difficult for the students. Example: Let's say two girls are playing tennis. One starts trash talking and the other feels bad. The first girl realizes her mistake and apologies and starts being encouraging. The pictures would essentially show a tennis game of two girls with some mouth shape changes and facial expression changes - and that is about it.pictures.

Story Arc: ADoes generallythe recognizedstory templatecontain a story arc? This is important for writing development in children and we want to emphasize that moston storiesour followplatform. is that they begin with some kind of exposition/introduction to situation and characters. There is some sense of rising action or conflict. Things come to a head in a climax, and then action falls and there is a full resolution. Example of issue: if there is a character that visits farm animals one by one, and that is it, that could work for young children, but might not be engaging enough for older children.