Read Between the Lines

Setup

1. Choose a POST appropriate for the player's Tandem Tales Edition/age range.
2. Give the player the Challenge POST only. Keep the separate Answer Sheet out of sight.
3. Choose a marking method: COLORS or MARKERS. Players may use both if desired.
4. For Early Edition players, an adult or older reader may read the POST aloud while the child listens, follows along, and helps identify the Information Categories.

How to Play

1. Read the entire POST before marking it.
2. Look for words, statements, or passages that may belong to one of the Five Information Categories.
3. Mark each identified section using the appropriate category color or drawable marker. Not every POST contains all five categories.
4. When finished, compare the Challenge POST with the separate Answer Sheet.
5. Use the numbered explanations beneath the Answer POST to discuss why each identified passage belongs to its category.
6. If you disagree with an answer, explain your reasoning and discuss what evidence or additional information might change the classification.

The Five Information Categories

Use colors or drawable markers, or both. Not every POST contains every category.

○FACTGreen · Circle

Something presented as true and established within the fictional exercise; in real-world media, a checkable claim still needs evidence before it should be accepted as fact.

___OPINIONBlue · Underline

What someone thinks, feels, likes, dislikes, predicts, or judges when the statement is not primarily being used to persuade the reader.

□BIASEDRed · Box

Information presented in a way that favors, promotes, or pushes one side, choice, person, group, event, or product. When persuasive language could also be called an opinion, BIASED takes priority for the official answer.

[ ]FACT + FICTIONPurple · Brackets

A statement that explicitly combines something established or checkable with an invented, exaggerated, unsupported, or unjustified extension, cause, conclusion, or promise.

( )FICTIONOrange · Parentheses

Something clearly invented or impossible within the exercise, when the passage is not mainly functioning as persuasion and is not built by stretching an established fact.

Classification Rules

• One official classification per marked passage. Overlapping official answers are not used in the printable collections.
• Classify the function of the exact marked passage, not merely whether every word in it could fit another category.
• Persuasive priority: when opinion-like or exaggerated wording is being used mainly to influence the reader toward a side, choice, event, group, or product, classify it as BIASED.
• FACT + FICTION requires an identifiable factual or established starting point that is then stretched into an unsupported, invented, or unjustified extension. A merely unsupported claim is not automatically FACT + FICTION.
• FICTION does not mean simply "wrong," "unproven," or "I do not believe it." Use FICTION for something clearly invented or impossible in the exercise.
• Not every POST contains every category. Some POST text should remain unmarked.

For these fictional exercises, treat the ordinary background details as established within the scenario. When examining real-world media, a checkable claim still needs evidence before you accept it as fact.

Variations & Challenge Levels