The Quill is a writing competition in which teams of four students must create written products given a prompt from each of four text types. The Quill is an original competition developed in cooperation with the North Carolina Reading Association. The middle school competition is aligned with the new Common Core Standards.

Each The Quill middle school team is composed of four members; each school will have two teams compete in The Quill regional competition (with the possibility of advancing to the state competition). The VARSITY team will be comprised mostly of students from grades 7 and 8. The JUNIOR VARSITY team typically includes more sixth and seventh graders. Each student on each team will compete independently by responding to a prompt from one of four text types (one student per prompt, per team):

- Argument
- Informational
- Narrative
- Problem/Solution

Entries will be judged awarding points for content, organization, and style, with more weight given to content and organization. Judges will be language arts teachers and other writing experts with experience in grading writing. The scores for all students on a team are combined to generate a team score.

(For more information go to: http://ncscholastic.org/index.php/thequill/52-quill-introduction)