Skip to main content

Summer SAVY, Session 1 Day 3, Cryptology Sect.2 (3rd – 4th)

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

Wonderful Wednesday was moving and grooving in Cryptology 101. Gifted learners are often challenged by working in partnerships or teams. Our group is doing an excellent job of capitalizing on each others’ strengths to find the clues and decode the pages of our story. Great teamwork! 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 had to do some writing about their evidence and justify their argument to a partner. I was so proud of the active listening and accountable talk moves I heard in class! I promised this would be the only time they had to write a hamburger paragraph, so they did an amazing job. Great work!   

Historically, we learned about Morse code in the World Wars, since it was one of the codes in our story pages today. We watched a brief video and solved some riddles in Morse Code. Ask them about the American soldier who used Morse Code to communicate with his eyes! We also 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, played a whiteboard game, and summed it up as a whole group to practice this new idea that we will build on tomorrow in math time. It was a fun and productive day. There was a lot of challenging, tedious decoding today, as well as upper-level mathematical thinking, way beyond grade level. I am so proud of them for digging in! What a pleasure and joy it is to work with your students and watch them grow!  

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.  

**The kids asked for the link to buy the book. It should be called “A Case of Red Herrings Mysteries” on your favorite bookseller’s website.