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Summer SAVY, Session 1 Day 3, Cryptology Sect.1 (3rd – 4th)

Posted by on Wednesday, June 12, 2024 in blog, SAVY.

How can it be Wednesday already?  

Gifted learners are often challenged by working in partnerships or teams. Our group is doing an excellent job of capitalizing on each other’s strengths to find the clues and decode the pages of our story. We know that the time the feast was stolen is a crucial piece of evidence, so we are looking more and more closely at the time on each page. Today, they wrote about who they believe is the thief and had to support their opinion with evidence and justify their argument. I was very impressed with their reasoning!    

Historically, we learned about Morse code in the World Wars, since it was one of the codes in our story pages today. After a review of Roman numerals, we launched into the very difficult concept of the Base Two Number System. With manipulatives and a lot of practice, students were able to regroup in twos, understanding that Base Two only uses 0’s and 1’s, a binary code. We completed some binary puzzles to practice this new idea that we will build on tomorrow in math time.  

Extension Idea: Play a game of red herrings at home! Your students know and understand the rules. Watch out for multiple-meaning words and setting clues, and have fun asking yes or no questions to decode the meaning.  Each of the “mysteries” is part of a longer untold story which is “behind the scenes.” It is up to the students to deduce the rest of the story from clues derived from answers to their Yes/No questions. Your amazing students LOVE these!  

Here’s a new one to try at the dinner table:
A man lives on the twelfth floor of a building. Each morning he gets up, showers, gets dressed, takes the elevator to the first floor, and goes to work. Each evening he comes home, takes the elevator to the sixth floor, runs up to the twelfth floor, and he’s home. Why doesn’t he take the elevator to the twelfth floor when he comes home?  

Answer: The man is too short to reach the button for the twelfth floor. He can reach the bottom buttons, so he can go down to the first floor in the morning, but he can only reach as high as the sixth button so that is why he walks the rest of the way up.  

How did you do?  

Have a great evening!  

Catherine Hayes