What do the ancient armies of Julius Caesar and a class of modern-day middle schoolers have in common? The answer is not as surprising as you might think – it's coding! This April, Sophia Academy participated in a special Hour of Code Week, both on and off the computer.
Sixth graders Nathalia and Ivanna work together to decode the location of their secret treasure.
Science teacher Alyssa Wood and math teacher Emily Fisher collaborated to create a special assignment with a twofold goal: to demonstrate coding beyond a computer screen, and to familiarize students with how words are put into “code.” The focus of their exercise was the Caesar Cipher, a type of code attributed to Julius Caesar. In this special code, letters replace each other using a numerical ‘shift.’ For example, “A” would become “B” in a shift of 1 (since all the letters were shifted over 1). The word “here” would then become “ifsf” using this shift. Try it out for yourself. What would “school” become using a shift of one?
Students began by creating their own cipher wheels: two paper wheels, both with the alphabet written along the edge. The smaller of the two wheels was fixed to the larger with a pin, so that letters could spin match to each other. Students then practiced coding and decoding words using different shifts. Once students grew comfortable shifting letters around, Ms. Wood and Ms. Fisher gave groups of students coded messages. Once decoded, these messages led to secret treasures hidden around the school building – some were even buried in the school yard!
In addition to the sweet treats, students also found the satisfaction of breaking a code and the fun of writing their own. In each hour-long lesson groups of students used persistence, teamwork, and critical analysis to break their codes. Although they never touched a computer, the skills practiced in their Caesar cipher lesson are critical to computer coding. Teams of coders must be thorough in reading lines and lines of computer code and communicate with each other about what they find. The Caesar cipher lesson served as an introduction not only to coding and decoding, but to the soft skills that make coders successful.
Besides, at the end of the day, who doesn’t love writing in secret code?
Written by Emily Fisher, math teacher and 8th grade co-advisor