Self-marking Reading Comprehension Decoding Activity: Cyber Threats - Social Engineering

This is an Excel-based reading comprehension activity that combines learning about different types of social engineering with a simple decoding task.

It is aimed at KS3 students and works well as an in-lesson activity or as a post-assessment filler activity.

The spreadsheet comprises of:

• a directions tab explaining what the student must do.
• a Read About It tab which contains a short text on the topic of social engineering.
• a Questions and Puzzle tab where students must answer ten questions based on the reading passage. Students receive immediate feedback when they get a question right or wrong. Each correct answer reveals a section of the cipher wheel.

Once all questions have been answered correctly, the encoded secret word is revealed and students must decode it using the cipher wheel.

Students must enter the secret word to complete the challenge.

Included is a readme file containing the answers to the questions and the secret word.
The spreadsheet comes in protected mode to prevent students from altering the structure or format.

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