We met in San Francisco on November 22, 2003.

We began with a discussion of the topic for the 2004 competition. Our analysis revealed that we repeated the word "wonderful" several times in this year's prompt. It was suggested that we use synonyms to provide additional cues to respondents. After this analysis we moved to an open discussion of topics. We discussed a request to vary the types of writing to be inclusive. Different states stress different types of writing at the eighth grade level for their testing. We did not come to a definitive agreement about varying among descriptive, narrative and persuasive topics. We will revisit this discussion.

We also discussed items that could be included in a "how to" step by step guide for those who have not participated within the program previously. We hope to devise a time line of events to stage the program. Another area of this guide needs to address potential problems in administering the program. Perhaps a Q and A format that addresses those frequently asked questions might be appropriate. There were suggestions for posting the evaluation rubric on the web site and in the brochure to give students and teachers more of a focus. We also are investigating the posting of winning student papers on the web site once we have releases from parents. This also would give staff and students better ideas of their goals.

The final area we addressed was how to publicize our winners and their teachers. Tennessee awards small plaques to their winners and honors their teachers at the statewide convention. All legislators are notified of their winners on a national level. Perhaps we can move this notification to include all state legislators also. We talked about various levels of publicity by publication of winners of both types; self-selected as well as the timed writing. The biggest concern was further authorization to print these materials. Even though there are signed releases on the entry form we continued to debate whether that was enough.

The meeting concluded with a general discussion of writing topics for the coming year's competition in 2005.

Jim Johnston, Chair