A Role Play Exercise On Spotting Scam Messages
Launch library · evergreen read
Role play itself works particularly well for scam recognition because it puts students inside the actual moment of pressure rather than analysing it calmly from a safe distance afterward. Pairing students, one writing a plausible scam message, the other responding as the intended target, surfaces the mechanics clearly from both sides.
Afterward, swap roles entirely and discuss openly what made the message convincing or unconvincing from each different perspective. Students writing the scam often discover, more vividly than any lecture could ever show them, exactly which tactics, urgency, familiarity, claimed authority, do the real persuasive work underneath the surface.
Close with a shared list of the tactics that came up repeatedly across the exercise, building a shared reference students can genuinely return to the next time a similar message arrives unexpectedly in their own inbox later on in life, well outside the classroom setting entirely and without any teacher present.