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The current situation means that I am finding the children are coping better with short projects rather than longer extended ones. I have been making use of our books to provide the springboard for topics that we are looking at right now.
This week we have looked at the story of Anna Strong which was absolutely fascinating. From there we produced a lapbook all about Anna Strong and spy skills!
Materials & Resources
This project didn’t require much preparation at all. The resources are:
- This book about Anna Strong
- These lapbook inserts
- Spies and Espionage Being Prepared Labelling Activity
- Caeser Code Cipher Wheel
- Secret Messages
The final three items are available from this spies and espionage pack.
In addition to the above resources, you also need something for the lapbook, a split pin, glue and the required secret message materials.
The Lesson
I started by asking the children what they understood by the term ‘spy’. They described the attributes of a spy to me and then we talked a little about why people might become spies.
We talked about what we thought a spy might look like and I then showed them the book we were going to share about Anna Strong. We read the book which tells the story of Anna and her role within the Culper Spy ring during the American Revolution. It’s a fascinating story and one that is really worth exploring.
It’s written really well and does a great job of explaining the context of the American Revolution without going into too much detail.
After we had read it, the children drew a picture each for the outside of their lapbooks. They both chose to depict Anna alongside her washing line of clothes. We then completed the lapbook inserts. For these, I just pulled out some of the key themes from the book to record.
Next, we moved on to the other things I have downloaded from Twinkl. We liked looking at the labelling sheet and it was good to test their understanding of some of the words we had come across during the reading. We also had a think about which of these words were good descriptors for what we had learnt about Anna Strong and did we think there were any other attributes we could add-in.
Next, we did the Caesar code cipher wheel which they really enjoyed doing. We set about decoding some of the messages on the worksheet as well as writing messages for each other. This was a lot of fun and the older two children really enjoyed doing this code-breaking.
Finally, I have the secret messages insert to do with them, which is looking at different ways that you can send secret messages. We haven’t done this yet as we ran out of time.
Other things to explore
There’s a lot you can do with this topic including learning about the American Revolution in more detail or learning about other spies. You could create your own spy codes or means of communication just like Anna Strong did with her linens on the washing line!
There are plenty of code breaker books too which might be of interest to children who find their imagination sparked by this topic.
You could also set up a secret mission whereby the children need to solves codes to earn a prize.
