Every scenario has three options. One is worth 3, one 1, one 0. No option is a joke answer — students are choosing between things real people actually do.
Four rules this bank never breaks. Room to Think is about reasoning rather than interpersonal safety, so these differ sharply from the Digital Decisions rules — in one case they invert them:
| Bar | Area | What a low bar tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Discernment | Ten Voices, One Source | The student counts how many times they heard a thing rather than how many places it came from. Repetition reads to them as evidence. |
| Curiosity | The Question Decides the Answer | The student asks questions that already contain the answer, then treats the agreement that comes back as confirmation. Their searching confirms rather than tests. |
| Discretion | Where You Say It | The student says the true thing in whichever room they happen to be standing in. The content is right and the audience was never chosen. |
| Initiative | The Cost of Later | The student treats a deadline as a start time. Their plans are arithmetically fine and carry no slack, so the first delay is the one that costs them. |
| 3 | Open the study the three of them link to |
| 1 | Tell him you don't trust supplements |
| 0 | Tell him four articles is enough for you |
Why the 3: Twelve people took part. It says so on the first page.
| 3 | Message the coach and ask |
| 1 | Ask the group where they heard it |
| 0 | Leave the kit, six people is six people |
Why the 3: Thirty seconds, and the match was on.
| 3 | Look for a review that describes a problem |
| 1 | Avoid the shop completely |
| 0 | Buy it, forty reviews is a strong signal |
Why the 3: You find three. All three mention the same broken zip.
| 3 | Find the paper's article and read it |
| 1 | Decide it's probably exaggerated |
| 0 | Post about it yourself |
Why the 3: It's closing for eight weeks of repairs, not for good.
| 3 | Ask someone in the year above who has had her |
| 1 | Stay up and finish it tonight |
| 0 | Hand it in late, they're all guessing |
Why the 3: She gives you until Friday if you tell her first.
| 3 | Keep both accounts and treat them as two |
| 1 | Ignore both and wait for someone official |
| 0 | Agree, one of them must be wrong |
Why the 3: Between them you've got the colour and the direction.
| 3 | Search "Nexa 7 review" and read the best and the worst |
| 1 | Search "Nexa 7 problems" as well |
| 0 | Buy the Nexa 7 |
Why the 3: The battery is the weak part. You knew before you paid.
| 3 | Search "does homework help" and add what comes back |
| 1 | Cut down to your five strongest |
| 0 | Start writing, eleven sources is plenty |
Why the 3: Two of the new ones disagree with your eleven. Now it's an argument.
| 3 | Search the medicine's name on its own and read the leaflet |
| 1 | Tell her you couldn't find anything useful |
| 0 | Tell her to stop taking them |
Why the 3: The common effects are mild. The frightening ones are rare and listed.
| 3 | Ask someone who dropped it |
| 1 | Take Design |
| 1 | Ask the three of them what they didn't like |
Why the 3: Four hours a week outside lessons. Now you can decide.
| 3 | Search the company name on its own |
| 1 | Tell her to avoid it anyway |
| 0 | Tell her it looks fine |
Why the 3: Registered nine days ago, no address. That's your answer.
| 3 | Change it to "How is the new lunch queue system working for you?" |
| 1 | Add a second question about what's good about it |
| 0 | Send it, everyone hates the queue anyway |
Why the 3: Nine said it's fine. You'd have missed all nine.
| 3 | Let it run and tell him in the car |
| 1 | Say nothing, ever |
| 0 | Correct him at the table |
Why the 3: He said he must have got it mixed up.
| 3 | Jog past him and say one sentence to him only |
| 1 | Say nothing until after the match |
| 0 | Shout at him from across the pitch |
Why the 3: He passed the next one.
| 3 | Wait and catch her in the stockroom |
| 1 | Email her that night |
| 0 | Explain at the till while the queue waits |
Why the 3: She fixed it on the system while you stood there.
| 3 | Say something true and small now, and talk properly later |
| 1 | Say you love it too |
| 0 | Say in front of everyone that it doesn't suit her |
Why the 3: She asked you on the walk home what you actually thought.
| 3 | Tell your partner quietly that you can't hand it in like that |
| 1 | Tell the teacher now, in front of everyone |
| 0 | Say nothing and hand it in |
Why the 3: He rewrote it that night. Nobody else ever knew.
| 3 | Tell the group the date moved and leave out why |
| 1 | Tell the group the date moved and why |
| 0 | Tell nobody, it's his business |
Why the 3: They replanned in a minute. Nothing about him came into it.
| 3 | Play it to her badly this Thursday |
| 1 | Practise every day and play it to her in the last week |
| 0 | Practise alone and surprise her |
Why the 3: She fixed your hand position with eleven days to spare.
| 3 | Fill it in now |
| 1 | Pay for the fast service nearer the time |
| 0 | Do it in a fortnight, three weeks is plenty |
Why the 3: It took four weeks. You had two spare.
| 3 | Ask her today, with a note about what you're applying for |
| 1 | Ask a teacher who knows you less but has more time |
| 0 | Ask in week three, it only takes her an hour |
Why the 3: She wrote it in week two, and it mentions the thing you told her.
| 3 | Pick the menu now and read the labels |
| 1 | Make something you're fairly sure is safe |
| 0 | Decide Saturday morning, it's only one dish |
Why the 3: The stock cubes had milk powder in them. You found out on Wednesday.
| 3 | Take it in this week |
| 1 | Take it in two days before you go |
| 0 | Take it in the day before |
Why the 3: They found the rear brake worn too. Both fixed.
| 3 | Take it to a Tuesday drop-in |
| 1 | Send it to a friend to read |
| 0 | Keep polishing it yourself until it's due |
Why the 3: She asked one question you couldn't answer. That's a section rewritten.
These are the scenarios a class most reliably splits on. Each one has a defensible minority position, which is the point — the discussion is worth more than the score.
This is the cleanest way into the rule above, and a class will push back hard. The answer is that walking away leaves the student exactly as unable to judge the next shop as they were before this one — they were safe by luck, not by method. Looking for a review that describes a problem costs thirty seconds and finds the broken zip. Good follow-up: “what would you have to see to decide the forty reviews were real?”
Worth being explicit here, because a class will read the score as being told not to involve adults. It is not. Telling the teacher is genuinely handled — it is just handled in the loudest room available, when a quiet sentence to the partner gets the work rewritten that night with nobody else involved. Say the next part out loud: if the partner refuses, telling the teacher is exactly right and there is nothing shameful in it. Note too that this is the one scenario in the area where saying nothing is the 0 rather than the 1 — because the student's own name is on the front page.
The most useful discussion in the pack, and it lands with the conscientious students hardest. Ten days of private re-reading produced two changed words; one Tuesday drop-in produced a question they could not answer and a section worth rewriting. The point is not that early is good — the student already did early. It is that time only converts into quality when something external gets to act on the work. Ask directly: “who has done this? Sat on something finished because showing it felt worse than polishing it?”
Assign one area rather than all four. Each is six scenarios, about six minutes, and produces one bar you can talk about. The Cost of Later is the strongest standalone — every scenario is a deadline a student recognises, and it is the area whose lesson transfers to schoolwork the same afternoon.