Student activities
Activities
Time to make: there are many ways to code, or encrypt, a message to keep it secret from your enemies. One way to encrypt a message is to use a substitution cypher, which replaces one letter with another. A step-by-step guide is provided for students to make their very own encryption machine to send a message using Caesar Shift 2. For example 'a' becomes 'b', 'b' becomes 'c' and so on.
Stretch and challenge: to ensure easy transfer of messages, the same encryption would be used for all messages in a day, changing at midnight each day. The activity asks students to work out the right code to transcribe an intercepted message. Once the code has been worked out, a series of messages are provided for students to de-code.
Duration
The activities are expected to last 60 minutes.
What you'll need
The following items per student:
Student guide
The student version of this resource can be downloaded here:
Code breaking - student guide