Top Secret Communication!

Well, you've probably heard the news by now.  This year's theme is... (drumroll please)

The students did a great job of figuring out the clues and tying things together.

Clue 1: the weird beeping sound in the 'Welcome Back' video
Most students realized it was a form of communication with many recognizing that it was Morse Code or a binary code (dots = 0 and dashes = 1s).  Kudos to the students who went above and beyond and decoded the message which said "This is Morse Code"!

Clue 2: the Far Side cartoon of the man trying to find out what language the duck spoke
This has to do with the idea of language as one of the key ways that humans communicate.

Clue 3: the 'Theme! Theme! Theme!' radio ad
Many students thought that the person voicing the ad sounded like me, which is crazy of course, but I took it as a compliment.  The relevance of this clue will be seen later.

Clue 4: the garbled message
We all agreed that this was not another language, rather it was an enciphered message.  Some students pointed out that the message used a lot of letters that we don't frequently use in English.  We looked for patterns in the message and students noticed that WKHPH! showed up many times, often three times in a row, and deduced that it was the word theme!  So t is replaced by W, h is replaced by K etc.  Then we noticed that the top line in the message DXJXVW 31VW, 2018 was probably the date.  Another student noted that the letters were all shifted by 3 places.  Holy cow!  (or should I say KROB FRZ!)   We're well on the way to deciphering the message.  In fact, three students deciphered the entire message on their own before our class had our first meeting!  Way to go Noah, Meghan and Rowyn!

Clue 5: 'This Week in Radio History' mini documentary
The mini documentary mentioned the importance of radio in World War II, in particular it mentioned the coded messages that were sent to members of the French Resistance via BBC's Radio London.

So what will we be learning about this year?

• Communication in general, including:
• languages
• communication devices
• verbal and non-verbal communication
• Secret Communication, including:
• codes
• ciphers
• methods of decryption
• steganography (hidden messages)
• Radio
• how radio works
• recording and editing audio
• interview techniques
• we will be producing our own radio show!  

After reviewing the clues and revealing the theme for this year we got down to business!  Students learned how to encipher and decipher messages using a Caesar Cipher.  Students put their new skills to work creating enciphered words or messages for their peers to decipher. 

Enciphering and deciphering messages using the Caesar Cipher.  

We also had a little fun with non-verbal communication with some of the classes playing the charades game Heads Up or doing an emotion walk (communicating different emotions while walking around the classroom.)

Thanks for taking the time to read about what we did... This Week In Gifted!