Your class made a checklist for deciding whether a source can be trusted. Today you will test it by trying to fool it.
Your group will make a source that passes every check on the list but still should not be trusted. Then another group will test it with the checklist.
Everything you make must be made up, with no real news outlets, people or products. It stays in this room.
Your class checklist is on the board. Think about how a source could trick it.
- Give each check what it asks for. If a check wants an author's name or a date, add one, even if nothing real is behind it.
- Admit one small weakness. Readers often trust a source more when it owns up to one small problem, because it seems honest.
- Make it look good. A tidy design wins trust, and checklists do not ask about design.
Which checks on your list could a source pass even if you still should not believe it?
Work in your group. In the activity below, you will make a news-style card that ticks every box on the class checklist but still should not be trusted. You will also hide one problem inside it, which is called a rot. The rot should be something that would stop a careful reader trusting the card, but that your checklist does not ask about. The full task is in the activity, along with where to find a picture and how to check whether you are allowed to use it.
Build a source that beats the checklist
Now the groups swap. Go to the screen your teacher sends you to and use your checklist on the other group's card.
- Go through every check. On your copy, mark each one pass, fail or no steer, which means the check does not help you decide either way. Beside each mark, copy down the line on the card that made you decide.
- Then choose your verdict, which is your decision about the card: trust it, check it further, or do not rely on it.
- If you found the rot, name it. If you did not, say so honestly.
Then each group reads out the line they wrote naming their rot, so everyone can see whether it was caught.
For every rot that was not caught, write one sentence saying what the checklist would have needed to ask to catch it. You will add these to the list next.
Each rot that got through shows a gap in the checklist, so now you will fill those gaps. In the activity below you will:
- Take the sentences from the board one at a time.
- Agree the smallest wording change that would have caught the rot, either a new check or a clearer version of an old one.
- Only add it if it would have changed a decision on one of today's cards. If it would not, leave it out.
- Save the improved checklist the class way, in the place your class keeps its work, so later lessons use this version.
Mend our source-evaluation checklist
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