As part of the Primary 7 East Renfrewshire Maths challenge we were exposed to a number of ciphers and codes. In order to decode the messages we understood that maths plays a vital role. We have been involved in 2 challenges linked to ciphers and decodng which we throughly enjoyed.

The first decoding activity that we undertook was part of the Primary 7 East Renfrewshire maths challenge. We were given 5 different messages to crack, each with a different cipher to use. The ciphers that can be seen in the image below is named pigpen. This was our favourite cipher to use.

The second decoding activity that we took part in was a decoding orienteering challenge. We had to use maps to find the secret messages that were here hidden in a number of secret places within our school playground. We found this a challenge but we applied our prior knowledge of ciphers to help decode the messages. We discovered that we each of the messages linked to events that occurred during WW2 and understood the importance of using codes during the war to keep all communication hidden from the enemies.