To-Do Post group Play-testing 10/10

Lee, Grace, and Rachel

Rules/Procedures:
Clarify accountability
When to switch interviewers
Choose who interviews first
Write own name/partners name on the writing prompts (for teachers sake)
Minor clarification points (Lee has these)
Mention the option/space to take notes
Clarify restrictions
Specify how many points lost due to restriction violations
Youre only restricted when asking your partner questions (not when
responding to questions from partner)
Write in complete sentences
Players responsible for keeping track of own scores
If they dont write it down during voting session, they can either
Ask teacher (master score card)
Reference the class score poster
Players being evaluated are still allowed to vote (maintain anonymity)
Switch prompts
Teacher Kit: Shelby and Mary Ellen
Teacher protocol/script
Score sheet
DONE Writing Prompts: Celina
Space for names
Add notes section
Re-label at top clearly

Rearrange Folders
New rules/procedures
New prompts
Stickers
New distribution of mission cards
Order:
stickers
mission
Rules/procedures
Undercover work
My profile
Score sheet

Rules/Procedures old 10/11

RULES & REGULATIONS
Introduction
Congratulations! Youve just been hired as an assistant detective for a top-secret intelligence
agency. There are 4 levels of expertise in our organization: assistant detective, cadet, detective,
and private investigator (PI). Your goal is to get promoted to PI by earning points at the end of
each mission. Your points will be determined during a performance review after mission
completion. Your teacher has been hired as the local director and will be updating us on your
progress.
Succeeding in each mission will depend on your ability to go undercover, obtain information
from your target, and be able to take on the perspective of your target after interviewing him or
her. Not only will you have to get information under increasingly difficult obstacles, you will also
have to fully understand your targets point of view in order to earn enough points to get
promoted to the next level. The ability to empathize with others and think from another persons
point of view is extremely important to be a successful PI in our agency. We hope to see you at
the PI graduation ceremony at the end of this quarter. Good luck!

Players
Choose one player to act as the local director who will facilitate gameplay (this is the
teachers role in our classroom implementation)
The director should divide the rest of the players into groups of two
Materials
Each detective will receive one m
ission folder. This mission folder will contain:
A list of the top-secret intelligence agencys r ules and regulations ( this
document).
A note card detailing your mission. Your task, restrictions, and a section to
track your partners accountability will be on this card.
A sheet of paper on which you will complete your undercover mission. The
title is Undercover Work
A sheet of paper on which you will answer a writing prompt as yourself. The
title is My Profile
Your personal ranking sheet. This will help you and the agency keep track of
your points and which detective rank you are.
A timer (which the director will have; use your phone for playtesting) will ensure
that all detectives complete their missions before the clock runs out.
Stickers to vote on detective promotions
Each detective pair randomly selected for assessment within the agency will have a
Promotion Assessment Poster for that week (in directors possession).
An Agency Progress Poster will be hung up in the agency so that everyones progress
through the detective ranks is visible to the entire agency (this does not apply to
playtesting).

Procedure
Gathering Evidence
Before you begin, pull out your Undercover Work prompt sheet of paper inside your
mission folder and write down your name and your partners name at the top right. Next,
determine who will be interviewing (asking questions) first and who will go second. Then, tell
your partner what behavior restrictions are placed on you (these depend on your rank and are
listed on your mission card) and have him/her make a note of these restrictions. If at any point in
your questioning of your target you break one of the restrictions, your partner should make a
note of it and you will be deducted 1 point per violation. The restrictions on your mission card
only apply to you when you are questioning your partner, not when you are responding to your
partners questions. You will be given a four minute deadline to interrogate your target. The
information you must uncover will be found on your mission card. All the information and
observations you unveil about your target can be written down in the Notes section. Once your
interview is over, it is your partners turn to tell you his/her restrictions and then to begin
questioning you (for another four minutes).
Keep in mind, after the interview you will both go undercover as each other, so you must
truly understand the others perspective (especially how the subject matter makes them
feel/think).
Going Undercover
In this part of your mission, you will become an undercover detective by answering a
prompt from your targets perspective using the evidence gathered from your interview. Fill out
the Undercover Work page, using the first person point of view a
s if you were your partner.
Write in complete sentences. This task must be completed in four minutes and you and your
partner will work at the same time. You must place yourself into the shoes of your target to
achieve this difficult task. Your performance will be assessed on how much your writing sounds
like your targets writing.
Updating Your Profile
In the second part of your mission, you will switch the still-blank My Profile sheets with
your target. You should end up with the profile sheet originally from your partners mission
folder, and your partner should end up with the My Profile sheet from your mission folder. You
will have four minutes to answer the prompt on the My Profile sheet you were given by your
partner. Write this piece from your own perspective in complete sentences. You and your target
will complete these at the same time. The director has the authority to enforce this time limit.
Scoring
The director will randomly select of the detective pairs to be reviewed for promotion
(for playtesting, it is fine for just one group to be reviewed)
For each selected pair, the director will read aloud first the My Profile response from
one partner, and then will read the Undercover Work written response with the same
prompt from the other partner.
The rest of the players will vote on how much the detectives writing in Undercover
Work sounds like their targets writing in My Profile

Find the stickers in the mission folder.

Now you, your target, and the rest of the players will vote on how similar the two pieces
are by each placing a sticker on the Promotion Assessment Poster in one of the
columns from 1-10
1 = doesnt sound like the targets writing at all
10 = sounds exactly like the targets writing
To calculate your score, the mode will be taken. Your score will be the one that is
most voted for (if there is an even number of votes split between two numbers,
take the average of them).
The roles of detective and target will then switch, and the scoring process will be
repeated.
The director should mark the scores for each individual in his/her master score sheet.
Everybody will start at 0 points. Points are cumulative.
You are in charge of keeping your own scores on the scorecard given in the missions
folder. If you forget to keep track of your points, no worries! Simply refer to the director
who has the master scorecard, or to the class scorecard poster.
There are four ranks:
Assistant Detective: 10 points
Cadet: 20 points
Detective: 30 points
Private Investigator: 40+ points

Time Frame
The game is conducted twice weekly for a full school quarter (9 weeks).
The first session of the week will be 30 minutes long and will include the introduction of
the game (in the first week), the giving of instructions, the pairing off of the students, the
distribution of materials and the two interviews per group.
The second session of the week will be 20 minutes long and will include the
Performance Review (voting) sessions as well as updating class/personal scores,
conferring new ranks upon the players, and collecting the materials by the teacher.
Teachers have the option of combining both sessions into one long game meeting if
desired.

Teacher Folder 10/11

Rules and Regulations for Local Director
Note: words in bold are the actions you will need to take during gameplay today!
Congratulations! Youve been chosen to be the teacher for this playtesting session, or in game
terms, the local director of our top-secret intelligence agency. In the game your official job
tasks are to assess detective progress and report back to our intelligence agency. In reality, the
teacher will have a deeper understanding of the game objectives and timeline (9 weeks). For
today, all you need to know is that your main tasks are to oversee game play, keep time, and
facilitate voting. Today there will only be one pair playing so overseeing game play will be
relatively simple. The game takes place in three parts: interviewing, writing, and voting.
The interviewing portion will take place in two four minute portions (in our actual game with
elementary-aged students, there will be two seven minute portions). After privately reviewing
their individual mission cards inside their detective folders, each player will tell the other his or
her restrictions for their missions. The restrictions depend on the level he or she is on; for
playtesting they will be assigned random levels as if the game has been going on during the
school year already. They will each get four minutes to interview the other (one person goes at
a time) and attempt to obtain the information given on their mission card. R
emind the players
that not only are they trying to get that information from their target but theyre also
trying to fully understand the targets perspective and how it makes them feel. Once they
are ready and have decided who will ask questions first, y
ou will begin the timer (set for four
minutes). Next, you will restart the timer for the other player to take his or her turn interviewing
(again set for four minutes). Be sure to give them time updates s o they know how much time
they have left.
The writing portion also takes place in two four minute portions. First, you will ask each player
to take out the writing prompt in his or her folder entitled, Undercover Work. Please
emphasize to the players that now is the time for them to go undercover as their target
(the person they interviewed) and answer the prompt as the target would - proving their
detective abilities. Not only should they write accurate information

but it should also sound like

the target. Start the clock for four minutes while they write. Next, instruct the players to
take out the file in his or her folder entitled, My Profile and give it to their target. They
will have four minutes to respond to this writing prompt
f rom their own perspective. Begin the
timer.
Once the players finish writing, you will collect their writing and their mission cards (you
should have four pieces of writing and two mission cards). In reality, the teacher will have a
classrooms worth of writing and mission cards and will randomly pick a pair of papers from the
stack. You will pick one of the players My Profile sheets. Do not read the author of any
writings aloud. Tell the players to make sure to listen carefully. Proceed to read the My
Profile sheet out loud to the players. Then, announce that you are about to read the

second piece. The second piece is the Undercover Work sheet with the same prompt as the
My Profile sheet you just read. To clarify, if Player A writes from his own perspective about the
sports he plays, and Player B writes an Undercover Work piece pretending to be player A,
then you would read Player Bs Undercover Work piece at this point in time. Tell players that
they need to listen to this one and decide how much it sounds like the previous piece
you read (assess how good the detective was at going undercover).
After reading both of these writings aloud, t ell players that they will vote on how much the
second piece of writing sounded like the first piece. Explain that giving the piece a 10
means that the second writing was exactly like the first, and that giving the piece a 1
means that the second writing piece was nothing like the first. Direct the players to the
stickers in their mission folders. Announce that each player gets to walk up to the
Promotion Assessment Poster on the board and place one sticker from his mission kit
under the number that he wants to give the piece of writing. Even if a players writing is one
of the pieces read aloud, he or she should still vote on it. The players votes should go in the
corresponding row of the poster (if this is the first time writings are read aloud, players vote in
row A. If its the second time, they vote in row B, etc.).
When all players have cast their votes, find the box with the most stickers in it. The box with
the largest number of stickers denotes the point total that the player will earn (so it will be a
number 1-10 based on how students voted - in reality the mode score would be chosen).
Announce the players point total based on the voting (not the name; this detective
earned). Note: if the largest number of stickers is split between multiple boxes, take the
mean of the boxes that share the highest number of stickers and use this as the players point
total. Next, Check the players partners mission card to determine how many deduction
points he accumulated (that is, if Player B goes undercover as Player A, Player A will have
kept track of how many times Player B broke the restrictions. In order to find out how many
deduction points Player B received, you will thus have to check Player As mission card).
Subtract this number from the class-determined score in order to calculate the final
score. Then, using the final score as the official point total, announce to all players that the
Undercover Detective in this round earned _______ points. The undercover detective
should still remain anonymous; do not announce who this player is. However, you can
announce that Undercover detectives should keep track of their own points on the scorecard in
their mission folders. Remember, only the person who went undercover earns this point total.
On your master scorecard, note the total number of points earned by the Undercover
detective. Over the 9 weeks, a classroom bar graph will demonstrate point accumulation per
student to foster competition/illustrate progress.
Do this entire voting process again, but with the remaining My Profile piece and
Undercover Work Piece.
We appreciate your service!

Note: words in bold are the actions you will need to take during gameplay today!
Congratulations! Youve been chosen to be the teacher for this playtesting session, or in game
terms, the local director of our top-secret intelligence agency. In the game your official job
tasks are to assess detective progress and report back to our intelligence agency. In reality, the
teacher will have a deeper understanding of the game objectives and timeline (9 weeks). For
today, all you need to know is that your main tasks are to oversee game play, keep time, and
facilitate voting. Today there will only be one pair playing so overseeing game play will be
relatively simple. The game takes place in three parts: interviewing, writing, and voting.
The interviewing portion will take place in two five minute portions (in our actual game with
elementary-aged students, there will be two seven minute portions). After privately reviewing
their individual mission cards inside their detective folders, each player will tell the other his or
her restrictions for their missions. The restrictions depend on the level he or she is on; for
playtesting they will be assigned random levels as if the game has been going on during the
school year already. They will each get five minutes to interview the other (one person goes at a
time) and attempt to obtain the information given on their mission card. R
emind the players
that not only are they trying to get that information from their target but theyre also
trying to fully understand the targets perspective and how it makes them feel. Once they
are ready and have decided who will ask questions first, y
ou will begin the timer (set for five
minutes). Next, you will restart the timer for the other player to take his or her turn interviewing
(again set for five minutes).
The writing portion takes place in two five minute portions. First, you will ask each player to
take out the writing prompt in his or her folder entitled, Undercover Work. Please
emphasize to the players that now is the time for them to go undercover as their target
(the person they interviewed) and answer the prompt as the target would - proving their
detective abilities. Not only should they write accurate information but it should also sound like
the target. Start the clock for five minutes while they write. Next, instruct the players to take
out the file in his or her folder entitled, My Profile and give it to their target. They will
have five minutes to respond to this writing prompt from their own perspective. Begin the timer.
Voting protocol - how it works/what to do
We appreciate your service!

Scoring Boards 10/12

Personal Ranking Sheet

Week
#
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Target Name

Points Earned

Deducted
Points

Total Points

Personal Ranking Sheet

Week
#
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Target Name

Points Earned

Deducted
Points

Total Points

Personal Ranking Sheet

Week
#
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Target Name

Points Earned

Deducted
Points

Total Points