For today’s practice you will play more complicated concentration listening games. Try Exploratorium: Listening Concentration Games. You have to really listen to the directions on these.

Now you’re ready to see how good a listener you are while someone else is talking. Listen to this audio interview with Skulduggery Pleasant. He’s a wise-cracking, classic car driving detective, an impeccable dresser…and a skeleton with magical abilities! If you haven’t ready his book, your missing out! Look at his Blog Post.

Listen to his interview: Skulduggery Pleasant Audio Interview

Now answer this question: Why is it that Skulduggery is told he has to be one of the good guys?

• Because there aren’t any other good skeletons
• Because there’s way too many bad guys
• Because  everyone will suspect a skeleton

Did you listen closely enough to be able to choose the correct answer?

Talk the Talk Word of the Day: Encode – To put secret information into a code.

Listening skills are crucial when interviewing both witnesses and suspects. A detective needs to remember exactly what a person said. It also might be important to listen at the crime scene. Is there a lot of traffic at the crime scenes? Can you hear barking dogs? Making note of the sounds at a crime scene might help you understand what a witness heard during the crime.

First, try these simple concentration games. The first one is like the classic concentration game.  Instead of trying to uncover two PICTURES that match, try to uncover two SOUNDS that match. Don’t be fooled by looking at the pictures. Only listen to the sounds. In the second game, play donimoes by matching SOUNDS, not counting the dots.

• Listening Memory Game
• Sound Dominoes

Finally, take a listening test with the Time Warp Trio. They need to be Sound Detectives to return stray sounds to their right time period.

Talk the Talk Word of the Day: Double Cross – When a person appears to be working for one side, but is really working for the other side.

Remembering a face is important, especially for the witness of a crime. A police sketch artist is trained to draw a picture of a suspect based on what a witness can describe about the suspect’s face. In the game The Art of Crime Detection you will witness two crimes. After each, you will be asked to help sketch a picture of the suspect. At the end, you can read an interview with a real police sketch artist.

Next, you can play How is Your Memory for Faces? You will look at a face and try to memorize features on the face so that you re-create what you saw. It’s harder than it sounds.

Talk the Talk Word of the Day: Cover – A disguise used to protect the identity of a spy or detective. While in disguise, they are “undercover”.

Yesterday you tried two very basic concentration style memory games. Then you tried the penny memory game. It was a lot harder wasn’t it? It took me about 10 tries to pick the correct penny. I wasn’t very good at that one.

Today, the memory games put you in a more realistic detective experience. In this first game, you are going to look at three different id badges. You will have 30 seconds to memorize all the details you can about each badge. Then you will be shown a series of badges and you will need to decide if each badge is real or a fake. Play Battle of the Badges. How did you do? It took me several tries to get through all three levels. It really is hard to keep track of several different details like: job title, name & badge color…all at once.

In this next challenge you are going to pretend that you have been called into court to testify about one of your recent cases. The defense is challenging your observational skills. You will be shown a picture for 10 seconds. During that 10 seconds you need to try to memorize as many details in the picture as you can.  Afterwards, you will be asked questions about what you saw. Rice U. Crime Scene: Test Your Memory. How did you do on that one?

Talk the Talk Word of the Day: Counterfeit - To make a copy look like the original. Counterfeit money is fake money.