Secret Agents: A great learning activity

Hello,

Just a quick post today as I want to share with you a great activity my class adored last week.  We swapped it in as part of our balloon pop countdown. It’s essentially a code-breaking game, but my students decided we should call it ‘Secret Agents’.

The premise is basically that of a scavenger hunt, I made a string of 5-6 (we played 3 times!) clues that were hidden around the school eventually leading to a ‘secret stash’ of mentos. The only difference was that I used this awesome site to create a simple alphabet substitution code for a couple of games, and a reversed code for another.  To add to the secret agent feel I created each team a ‘top secret memo’ with their own cipher to help them figure out the code.

I split students into groups of 5 and each teams messages were printed on different colours to prevent any confusion or upset as multiple groups try to read messages at the same time.  They had such a good time ‘cracking’ the clues and then racing (in an orderly, school appropriate fashion) to find the next one, they asked to play again on the last day of school and want me to leave a note for their new teacher next year so that they can play when they come back in the summer!

Here’s a look at our Top Secret Memo and a link to download the template from my TpT store:

Secret Agent Code Breaking Game

Download Link from TpT

That’s it for now, but check back in soon because I’ve been busy tonight sorting through a stack of new books that just arrived that I can’t wait to write about!

Thanks,

Emma

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