Teaching Resources

These pages into a resource for teachers; offering ideas for lesson plans, down-loadable worksheets and suggestions for running entire ‘Spy Days’. It also offers useful links to other children’s websites on codes and codebreaking.

Please do send me any resources that you have developed that you would like to share with other teachers. The more information that is available, the better this resource will become. So, please remember to keep checking this site.
 
The Code Book CD-ROM also contains some useful teaching resources and is available at a reduced rate of £3 each to schools.

SPY DAY
Mrs. Smith from St. Peter’s Catholic Comprehensive School in Guildford organised a Spy Day in July 2002 for a Year 9 Technology Day.

In the morning, pupils were given a booklet of assignments and exercises that introduced them to different ciphers.

In the afternoon, the whole year group took part in a field competition, sending messages in teams around the school playing fields.

You can download the Pupils’ Booklet, the Teachers’ Booklet (containing the answers!), a booklet on Roman Signalling and a booklet about Semaphore Signalling as Word documents by clicking on the links below.

Yr 9 Pupils’ Booklet
Yr 9 Teacher’s Booklet
Roman Signalling
Semaphore Challenge

CIPHER CHALLENGE
Vicki Addey, Head of Mathematics at Norman Court Prep School in Salisbury, organised a Cipher Challenge for all pupils in Years 5 to 8.

You can download information about the challenge as a Word Document by clicking on the link below.

She has also kindly provided ideas for a lesson on Frequency Analysis, and an overview of different types of code.

Yr 5-8 Cipher Challenge
Frequency Analysis Lesson Plan
Code Breaking Overview

Gifted and Talented Summer School - Code Challenge
Janet Simmer from the Nottingham South e-Learning Centre designed this fantastic 10-stage code challenge. 25 children from Years 6-8 took part in the centre's code-themed summer school in July 2003. The challenge is in text and word format, and the children who took part submitted their solutions to the "Cipher Master" (Janet's son!).

The information below includes an introductory message to children, the ten cipher messages, the ten correct answers and a list of keys for teachers for each message. Happy cracking!

Introduction
Cipher Messages
Correct Answers
Teacher's Keys

KS2/3 Teachers’ Packs

When the project visits schools, I generally leave teachers with a pack of worksheets for follow up work. These worksheets and are suitable for students in Years 5, 6 and 7, and include a bunch of jokes written in Pig Pen, a template for a Caesar wheel, worksheets looking at a more mathematical approach to the Caesar shift cipher and an exercise in frequency analysis to decipher a message written by Mary Queen of Scots. The frequency analysis lesson is adapted from one designed by Sue Johnston-Wilder of the Centre for Mathematics Education at the Open University, and is available, along with more resources, on The Code Book CD-ROM. There is also a template for making a mock-up of the Spartan 'Scytale' codes (adapted from Vicki Addey's ideas).

Pig Pen Cipher
Caesar Wheel

The Caesar Cipher - Worksheets
Frequency Analysis Worksheets
Frequency Analysis Teachers’ notes
Scytale template

The Code Book on CD-ROM
Further Resources

Senior Resources
Because of the pressures that the curriculum puts on senior school students, I have found that teachers often say that there is little scope to investigate codes in depth. But when I visit schools I try and leave teachers with some ideas on how the principals I have spoken about (particularly with frequency analysis) can be extended into maths lessons. Frequency analysis investigations are prefect for exploring 'real life' statistics and for building skills in data handling. The 'Frequency Analysis Investigation' sheet outlines some of these ideas. There are also some tips on getting to grips with the Code Book CD-ROM as well as a list of websites students can look at if they are interested in learning more.

This 'Mini Cipher challenge' has also been used as follow up lessons an Enigma Project talk to familiarise pupils with some of the activities on the CD-ROM. They after decipher three messages using the CD-ROM to generate clues to a keyword. Although the activity is really designed to complement the Enigma project presentations, it can be used alone, as long as the students have done sufficient work on codes and ciphers, and are familiar with the intricacies of the Enigma machine!