Bring WWII Codebreaking and Critical Thinking to the Classroom with Bletchley Park nonfiction passage

 Do you ever read something and think to yourself, "How did I not know about this?"  That's how I felt when I first heard about the codebreakers out of Bletchley Park during World War II.

I created my Bletchley Park Nonfiction Passage (with all kinds of wonderful activities) after finishing the novel study for The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin.  You can read a review of the book here.

The more I read the book, the more intrigued I was, and I was sure 5th and 6th graders would be also.  I was aware of how little I knew about this side of WWII history and I wanted to open a window so others could learn about it, too.

What Bletchley Park Actually Was

During World War II, British intelligence took over a mansion about 55 miles north of London and filled it with mathematicians, chess champions, linguists, and puzzle-solvers, all working to crack Germany's Enigma machine. That struck me as an unlikely cast of characters, but their reasoning made sense for that time.

Bletchley Park is a story about cooperation, with Polish mathematicians who cracked the code years before the war even reached Britain, a 20-year-old officer who climbed into a sinking submarine to grab secret codebooks, and an engineer who built what many consider the world's first programmable computer, just to keep up with an even harder German cipher.  Yes, Alan Turing is the most prominent name associated with this location.  And he was brilliant.  But he had lots of help, before and after creating his amazing decoding machine.

It's also, quietly, a story about how many young people did the actual work. Some of the codebreakers were barely older than your students are now.

Some of the Engaging Features of this Resource

I built this as a passage-plus-activities resource rather than a straight reading comprehension worksheet, because I believe this topic deserves more.  I also didn't want students to respond to, "What did you read?" as much as "What can you figure out from what you read?"

The first activity is one students will remember.  They will learn about a Caesar Shift and use it to decode messages.  This is actually a simpler code than was used during World War II but I wanted students to be able to solve it.  Students have to decode six messages and then determine whether those messages are true or false.  That's a great way to get them rereading the text!

Another one of the activities is called: Crack the Case: Evidence and Reasoning Challenge.  Students are given 6 pieces of evidence that might help a codebreaker solve a message:

• a repeated operator habit
• an operator mistake
• a captured Enigma machine
• a captured codebook
• the Bombe
• another German mistake

They have to consider each clue and how useful it would be to a codebreaker.  

👉👉Then, I added an extra layer.  They are told that they have only one day to solve the code.  They don't have time to research each of the clues.  Which three of the six would they pick?  The beauty of this is that there is no right answer.  But your students will have to build a case for why the ones they chose are the right ones.

Why This Resource Works in Your Classroom

There are the five different missions.  That range means you can use one or all of them, as a single-day nonfiction reading lesson with one activity, or stretched into a 3-5 day mini-unit.

🔐Mission 1: Decode a message using a Caesar Cipher (a real code, just simpler than Enigma, so every student can crack it)
 🕰️ Mission 2: Reconstruct the Story of how the codebreaking effort actually unfolded

🕵️‍♂️ Mission 3: Crack the Case,  rating clues by usefulness and defending their reasoning
🧩 Mission 4: Master the Vocabulary with a crossword built from the passage's key terms 
🧓Mission 5: Who Helped Crack the Code where you match historical clues to people and their contributions  

An Engaging Way to Blend English and Social Studies

If you've read other posts on my blog, you know that I love blending subjects and this topic easily combines English and Social Studies.  In addition, your students will:

• practice vocabulary
• work with sequencing
• analyze text evidence
• make inferences
• solve a problem

and learn about a fascinating part of World War II history.  That's a pretty good combination.  And more importantly, they're not just learning about important people and places.  They're getting a chance to think like problem solvers.

If you'd like to bring Bletchley Park, Enigma, and the codebreakers into your classroom, click on the picture above.