Judge InvestWrite Essays in Three Easy Steps

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1 Generously underwritten for the SIFMA Foundation by Judge InvestWrite Essays in Three Easy Steps Step One The student essays you will judge are based on the InvestWrite assignment below. Please familiarize yourself with the following. InvestWrite Assignment for Grades 6 8 Background: There are lots of nonprofit organizations that help make the world a better place. Examples include the Red Cross, YMCA, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and the World Wildlife Fund. They raise money to meet the needs of others, especially when emergencies arise. Writing Assignment: Imagine you volunteer at a nonprofit organization to manage their money, help it grow and protect it from risk. What would your nonprofit organization support and why is this important to you? How would you invest their money in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds? How would you diversify these investments? Be sure to explain your recommendations based on what you have learned about saving and investing and what you have researched about the cause. Step Two You will score the essays on a 300-point system based on the student s rationale, their understanding of the subject matter, and their writing style. Each area is weighed equally in the scoring process. Below are suggested guidelines for the essay grading criteria: Rationale (100 points) The essay should be well organized and written in a manner that indicates there was a logical thought process involved in addressing the assignment. In the essay, the student should present a thoughtful progression of ideas and recommendations. The essay should draw clear connections between the students thinking and recommendations or conclusions. 1

2 Is there a clear progression of logical thought? Is the essay well organized? Does the essay clearly address all elements of the question as it was presented to the student? o You are a volunteer for a nonprofit organization and you manage their money o How do you help it grow and protect from risk? o How would you invest this money? o How would you diversify? o Be sure to explain your recommendations and what you researched Has the student successfully distinguished between important details and unnecessary details? Understanding of the Subject Matter (100 points) Read the essay with the following questions in mind. Does the student address the elements of the question using appropriate terminology? Does the student exhibit knowledge regarding researching and planning an investment strategy? This aspect of scoring targets the students understanding of the basic concepts taught in the Stock Market Game. Does the student use the appropriate language or terminology when explaining his or her position? Has the student made sensible statements in writing the essay? Does the student demonstrate a correct understanding of the concepts they address in their response? Has the student demonstrated a sound understanding of what it means to make a good investment for the long term? Does the student demonstrate an understanding of risk? Does the student demonstrate an understanding of diversification? Judges might give a student extra points for selecting or referencing more than one of the choices of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Writing Style (100 points) This scoring element allows the student's creativity to be recognized. Judges assess if the essay is interesting and easy to read and if they were encouraged to continue reading to the conclusion of the essay. Students have an opportunity to exhibit the ability to communicate thoughts in an engaging and inviting manner. Writing style includes assessment of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. This scoring element also offers students the chance to think beyond examples provided in the essay prompt and make their essay unique by expressing their individual interests and creativity. Is the essay interesting to read? Did the student add creativity to the essay by creating narrative about the nonprofit organization they selected and why it s important to the student? (Please note: It isn t required that the organization exists, the student was free to imagine a cause or nonprofit.) Does the response encourage you to continue reading to the conclusion of the essay? Does the student use an engaging approach to address the elements of the essay? Does the student use complete sentences, proper punctuation, and good grammar? Does the essay demonstrate the student s careful crafting and revision? Step Three Decide if you would like to: Review and score the entries on the judging website -OR- 2

3 Print the entries and return to the judging website to assign scores to each essay Consider entering comments in the field labeled Comments and Feedback for Teacher/Student. This is a great opportunity to provide important feedback to the student and teacher regarding your insights and judging rationale. Many teachers request feedback. As a judge your scores and comments will remain anonymous. A brief sentence is adequate. A FEW ITEMS TO NOTE: Please remember, submitting your final essay scores within the designated time is critical to ensuring the process moves forward and we can inform winning teachers and students as soon as possible. Your Username and Password will permit you to return to your assigned essays as often as you need. Each time you exit, your scores will be saved. Be sure to return and submit all scores when you have completed the process. Please review your essays and assign scores in the three areas, then return as soon as possible to submit all your scores through the InvestWrite judging website: NOTE: Once you have entered all individual scores it is necessary to click on the Submit Final Scores button to complete submission. We are available to help with questions and support via at: help@investwrite.org SOME ITEMS THAT MIGHT BE HELPFUL AS YOU JUDGE YOUR ESSAYS: When grading essays, you might think back to the last time you took a class or taught a course that involved an A through F grading system. One method of judging would be to grade the essay in each of the three areas described above based on the 100-point scale as you read each one (i.e., A=90 and above, B=80 and above, etc.). Another approach involves reading the essays all the way through and ranking them. As you scan them again based on your rankings, you can apply a percentage of the 100 points available for each criterion. Before we recognize a student winner we go through an extensive process to ensure the essay is the work of the student, including use of anti-plagiarism software. However, sometimes an essay might cause you to question whether a student wrote it. Please send us a message containing the essay number if you should have this concern. All essays are judged a minimum of four times, by separate judges. The score you place on an essay will become a part of a composite score within the rest of the judging process. PREVIOUS INVESTWRITE WINNING ESSAYS Many of our judges like to review successful essays that received recognition in the past. Below you will find a first-place winning essay at both the national and state levels. The national essay ranked first place among all essays that were submitted in that grade division for the semester competition. The state essay was the highest scoring essay in this grade division for a state, but not nationally ranked. 3

4 PREVIOUS WINNING ESSAYS FOR OUR JUDGES Grades 6 8 National First Place Essay, Fall 2015: THERE IS AN APP FOR EVERYTHING! Winning Student: Abigail T. Winning Teacher: Michelle Humphrey Grade: 7th Place: Pleasant Hill Middle School, Pleasant Hill, MO To Think About: Everybody is crazy for apps! There is an app that can tune your guitar or your ukulele if you have one. There s an app that will blow out your birthday candles. There s even one that will turn your phone into a metal detector! Imagine an app that helps people make investment decisions. Think about what you ve learned in the Stock Market Game. What would the app need to be highly rated? What would the menu include? Consider what the first screen might tell a new user about investing and what features could help users make better long-term investments in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. What would the app have the investor do to increase their portfolio value over time? What website links would it have? What would make you want to download the app and use it right away? Be creative! You can even come up with a unique name for the app! Writing Assignment: Explore the examples above and using your own ideas and research, discuss the features of this app that would make it a successful long-term investment tool. Reflect on an investment in your own Stock Market Game portfolio, or a stock or bond or mutual fund in which you are interested. Describe that investment and why you selected it. Explain how this app could be helpful to you when making decisions for your financial future. Stock Ease The Stock Market is a great way to invest in stocks that you enjoy and keep track of your favorite brands. However, 52% of Americans don t invest in the Stock Market. An app could solve this problem. I present to you a new app that helps people make decisions and learn about the Stock Market, called StockEase. StockEase is an easy-to-use app, just as the name suggests. The first screen of this app would give the viewer a tutorial of how to use StockEase as well as what it means to invest in a stock. As the viewer progresses through StockEase, various items such as price-to-earnings ratios, dividends, how a stock rises, peaks, and plunges will be explained. This would help the viewer understand more about how the Stock Market works and how to invest their money. StockEase would have various menu items located at the bottom of the screen to help the viewer experience the most of the Stock Market. The menu would include current events such as news, new brands, trends in the stock market, links to websites such as CNN and Yahoo Finance, expert opinions on how stocks are doing, and the best stocks in the market. A notifications tab would be included at the top of the screen, where you can learn about how well the stocks in your portfolio are doing, as well as a link to your portfolio. When the viewer selects a stock that they are interested in, they will be given the stock s name, how high or low the stock is during that day, various charts to show how well the stock is doing compared to how it has done in the past, and links to news concerning the stock. This screen will also provide videos predicting how the stock will do and when they gave their most recent dividend, it will give their current price, and it will have a simple way to invest in a stock. The Trade button will help you contact a broker and add the stock to your portfolio. If you aren t ready to invest in the stock, you can select the Notify button and choose the price you want the stock to drop before investing. Located at the top of the screen would be the search bar. Here, the viewer could search for stocks by looking up their favorite brands or the stock s financial acronym, and they can refine their search by cost or best of the Stock Market. There would also be a Help Center for questions about StockEase and Settings that can help you turn off notifications or turn off the tutorials in the app. This would be useful for people that download the StockEase app but already know how the Stock Market works. This app can help someone if they aren t sure if they want to invest. For example, if a viewer wanted to try a stock, they could press Notify but they don t need to press Invest. The Notify button will still notify them and can provide suggestions on whether to invest or trade by averaging how many points it has risen and dropped in a day. Seeing how well a stock is doing over a period of time could let the viewer experience long-term trading without having to invest in the stock. One stock my team used in The Stock Market Game was BBSI, or Barrett Business Services Inc. We invested in this stock because we expected it to rise due to a trend we found where the stock rose nearly twenty points over just a few months. We also invested in BBSI because it was one of the stocks that helped us win the previous year. This stock was very shaky this year, though, and I think that StockEase would have helped us make the 4

5 most out of BBSI. For example, I could find this stock in the search bar and look at the price of this stock. If it was rising, I could press the Notify button on the screen, and I would get notifications once the price lowered. If I invested in this stock, I would get notifications that tell me how well it is doing and if experts predict that it will drop. This could help me determine whether or not to short sell it. BBSI failed to follow Nasdaq s continued listing requirement, according to Yahoo. If I had StockEase, it would let me know about this through notifications. BBSI drops often during the day, and StockEase would notify me about that, too. StockEase would also advise me about whether I should trade or keep BBSI according to an average of recent point rises and drops. StockEase could link me to the official website for BBSI to learn about this company s new releases. This would tell me if the company is doing well. Another link could be to Yahoo Finance, where links to news about BBSI can be found. I can use this to help determine whether I should trade this stock. StockEase will help long-term investors achieve their goals by giving them links to various websites, notifying them about how well stocks are doing, and predicting which stocks will do well. Investors can use StockEase to check their portfolios and invest in stocks that they would like as well. If you re ready to take the bull market by the horns, then StockEase is the app for you! State First Place Essay, Spring 2015 Winning Student: Megan L. Winning Teacher: Emily Gold Grade: 8th Place: Premier Charter School, St. Louis, MO Background: In his Motley Fool editorial, Jason Hall claims you can turn $10 a day into $1.3 million. He writes: people who continue to put money in their accounts every month in good markets and bad ones get the best returns. It's when people try to outsmart the market, jumping in and out in an effort to time market cycles, that they lose money in stocks. Putting a little money to work on a regular basis, for as many years as you can, works better than anything else. Writing Assignment: Imagine you are a time traveler. Your mission is to travel back in time to January 1, 2005 to prove or disprove Jason Hall s theory. Identify a stock, bond, or mutual fund from your Stock Market Game team portfolio or one that interests you. Would you have earned money by now if you had invested in it then? Would you have earned money if you had sold it one year later on January 1, 2006? Five years later on January 1, 2010? Describe the stock s, bond s or mutual fund s movement over the course of time. What factors influenced its price? Explain whether you think the stock, bond or mutual fund is a good investment or not. You can be as creative as you want. The theory of Jason Hall is that if you invest as little as $10 into a stock, good or bad, the $10 will then become $1.3 million over time. You also do not want to jump into and out of stocks whenever they are not doing well. It is best to stay in stocks for years rather than weeks because it is easier for people to lose money when they jump from stock to stock. For example, a stock in my portfolio that supports this theory is Hershey, HSY. At first the stock cost $54.36 in January of The stock then started dropping in May of 2005; the lowest cost for the stock was $30.75 per share in March of If I had backed out when it dropped I would have lost $ On the other hand, if I had kept my money in the stock, even when the stock dipped in 2009, I would have gained $48.07 per share today. The stock from my portfolio that I chose was Nike, NKE. I chose Nike because I am an athlete and Nike supplies great athletic wear and accessories. If I had gone back in time and bought shares in the stock in 2005 I would have paid $21.66 per share. If I had sold the stock in January of 2006, I would have lost $1.63 per share. Even though it is a small loss, it is still a loss. However, if I had kept the stock over the course of the five years, I would have made $10.22 per share if I sold the stock in The stock movement over the course of five years was somewhat steady until October of 2008 when the stock dropped from its highest point in 2008, at $34.94 per share to $19.97 per share in May of In total, from , Nike went down $15.04 per share. If I had sold the stock then, I would have had a slight loss, but still a loss. On the other hand, if I had kept the stock over the course of ten years, regardless of the ups and downs of the market, I would have eventually gained $74.47 per share which is almost 3 times more than the amount I initially paid to buy the share of stocks. One reason for the rise in Nike stock could be due to the shift in who they mainly targeted. At first, their main focus was athletes, but now they include more casual wear, so they can reach out to people whether they are athletes or not. This is important because, at first, when Nike was only helping athletes, they were only helping a small percentage of people. However, when Nike started supplying casual wear for anyone they started expanding their core customer base. In conclusion, Nike does prove Jason Hall s theory. It does because even though the stock had a major dip in 2008, the stock bounced back and is still rising. If I had jumped from stock to stock when the dip happened I would have lost money. Therefore, since I have kept with the stock as it is rising, I am gaining what I would have lost and more. 5