Fishbowl Scribes

Procedure

• 1. Divide the participants into equal teams, and have them all sit in a line or a circle.

  2. To maintain balance and fairness, all the teams need to sit in one way or the other.

  3. Each team should have a paper and hard writing surface or a whiteboard.

  4. Either give all participants a writing utensil or only give one per team.

  5. Have two teams send up one representative per round.

  6. These representatives should come from different teams every time if applicable for balance and fairness.

  7. The facilitator will choose one of the representatives to do charades (acting), and the other to do taboo (talking). Both representatives will have the same prompt.

  8. The charades person will go first and have 30 seconds to act out the prompt. Then the last 30 seconds will be given to the taboo person to explain the prompt without saying what the prompt is.

  9. During the one minute that the representatives are acting or explaining the prompt, the teams must try to guess what the prompt is.

  10. Each person on a team may only write down one letter OR cross out a letter. Team members cannot choose to pass and do nothing. Each person must choose one of the two options. Team members may not talk or help each other in writing down their letters or crossing them out. 1 In the case of a misspelled letter, the person who notices it does need to cross out that letter. If another letter should go in that spot, someone does need to write the correct letter in that spot.  If it continues to be wrong, that new letter also needs to be crossed out again until it is correct. 2 If a letter is missing, then someone can insert the letter, without having to cross out the other letters, provided that the other letters are correct and in the right place.

  11. Any letter written down can be crossed out at any time. For example, if the second letter is wrong, but some other teammates have gone to the fifth letter, someone can cross out the second letter without crossing out all the ones after.

  12. Once the paper/whiteboard has reached the last person on the team, it goes back to the first person and continues to cycle until the team is finished.

  13. In the case of teams sitting in a line, the facilitator may choose to have the last person pass it back down to the first person before continuing or just have the paper/whiteboard passed back the direction it came from until the team is finished.

  14. Every team has only one chance to get the answer correct. Once a team has signaled the facilitator, that team cannot continue to write. The team that answers it correctly first gets the most points, and all other teams with correct answers will get a decreasing number of points.

  15. If 4 teams, 1st = 4 points, 2nd = 3 points, 3rd = 2 points, 4th = 1 point.

  16. If 5 teams, 1st = 5 points, 2nd = 4 points, 3rd = 3 points, 4th = 2 points, 5th = 1 point.

  17. Allocate the points based on the number of teams in the game. If any team answers incorrectly, they are not included in the placement. This means it is possible that the team that finishes last still gets the 1st place points because all the other teams did not get the correct answer.

  18. Continue as many rounds as time allows. The team with the most points wins.

Notes

• • The prompts should be a person, place, or thing that isn’t too long.

    • The facilitator should make it clear what the prompts require of the participants. For example, no titles should go in front of the prompts (David rather than King David). Obviously, if a team is confused and tries to write out the title as well as the name, they will have a disadvantage because it takes longer to write.

    • Events may be used, but it is recommended not to try events until the participants are comfortable with how the mechanics of this game goes.

  • 1 Team members shouldn’t talk in order to foster more team effort in relying on others without a few people or even one person carrying the whole team.

  • 2 If this is played with younger people, you can simplify rules or give more hints like the number of letters in the answer.

  • You can also write down the blanks for them (Ex: if the answer is Joseph, you can write _ _ _ _ _ _ for them).