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Last Monday morning the Year 4 corridor was filled with songs from the 1940s in preparation for World War 2 day. Keen to be fully immersed in their roles as code breakers at Bletchley Park, Year 4 pupils arrived dressed in costumes befitting the era.

The pupils’ first challenge was to prove their literacy skills by correcting a passage with missing punctuation; using a cursive script was of the upmost importance. The team of code breakers went on to encrypt their own messages using a cipher and also decrypted codes written by others. They also learnt about the remarkable people who worked at Bletchley Park, many of whom were mathematicians, chess players and crossword champions. Pupils put their own skills to the test when they completed a crossword about the Blitz and used the four operations to solve challenging maths puzzles to reveal a secret message. They were fascinated to learn about the building of Colossus and how this remarkable, first computer went on to crack the Enigma code – and understood that the work at Bletchley Park enabled the British to read messages sent between the Germans forces, resulting in a swifter end to the war.

During the afternoon, pupils extended their understanding of how the allies defeated the Nazis. They learnt about the events that led to Victory in Europe Day and how the British people celebrated. The children wrote postcards to a friend describing how they heard the news, the street parties that followed and the feelings of relief and jubilance when the war was won. The day was brought to a conclusion when the children sang some of WW2’s most memorable songs, including Pack Up Your Troubles.