Visit to King's Lodge School

Miss Martin and I went to spend an hour with both Y6 classes at King's Lodge school in Chippenham this afternoon.  It was part of their topic on World War 2, and we went to do a bit of maths, and a bit of history about code breaking - in particular code breaking during the war.

We started with a bit of more ancient history - messages wrapped around sticks, shaved heads and tattoos, and even messages written on the inside of a hard boiled egg!

Next we talked a bit about the Caesar Shift - to download your own code wheel click here...

We even had a play with a virtual German Enigma machine.  It has got 15 000 000 000 000 000 000 possible settings!  To play with the settings and encrpyt your own messages you can click here...

To finish students solved a murder mystery, where clues covered a range of different techniques. The key to each of the clues can be found here.

Thankyou to King's Lodge for inviting us in, and a massive well done to Y6 - we were very impressed with how well you engaged with the discussion and the challenges!

National Cipher Challenge 2011

It is back, one of the most fun and eagerly awaited competitions of the year (for me anyway!)

The National Cipher Challenge is a codebreaking competition open to schools across the UK.  Registration opens on Thursday 15th September, with the first challenge on Thursday 29th September at 3:15

We are looking for teams of about 4 students per team willing to take part.

Training will be given in Maths Club time, Tuesdays after school and open to everyone.

For more details, come and see Mr Smy, or just turn up to maths club on Tuesday.

The Competition site is http://www.cipher.maths.soton.ac.uk/.

Good Luck!  As well as the national Leaderboard, we will be posting a John Bentley Leader board here on the blog.

Well Done Y13

Thursday saw The John Bentley School Maths department achieves its best A Level results ever!

In total our students (6 of whom are pictured above) achieved....

1 A*, 8 As, 4 Bs, 1 C and 1 D. These results are not only a significant achievement in themselves, but beat both their personal targets and school targets.

In addition this was the first year group at John Bentley to study for Edexcel AS level in Further Maths, acourse that is rapidly growing in popularity at school.

Results for Further Maths were ...

2 A's, 1 B, 1 C, and 1 D. Students achieved these Further Maths results in just 1 lesson a week, with significant amounts of independant learning and hard work.

One student worked even harder than the rest, and taught himself A2 Level further maths, including the Further Pure 2 & 3 modules! Despite having to do most of the work independantly James managed to not only achieve an A* in maths, but and A in Further maths.

All of our students worked really hard over two years, and deserve the fabulous results above. Despite being involved in many other things both in school and out, such as Duke of Edinburgh awards, many being Head Students, and sporting commitments they never let anything get on the way of their studies.

Well done!

Design a drinks carton

10 M 1 have been designing a drinks carton. The only rule is that the volume must be 330ml, and they need to work out the Surface Area to make sure it does not cost too much to make...

Lydia decided to get creative...

Year 5 Open Evening

Welcome to open evening.

One of the activities we are doing is a data collection exercise, creating live pictograms.

We are also collecting data online, using a Google Form.

Keep refreshing this page (press F5) to update the chart below to the most up to date information.

Year 5 Caeser Shifts...

Congratulations to Y5 for making such fantastic code wheels today, and decrytping such wonderful work.

Don't forget to bring your code wheels with you to open evening.

Feel free to reply to the following message in the comments for this blog...

the only clue I will give you is gT....

ZL SNIBEVGR OVG NOBHG BHE QNL NG WBUA ORAGYRL JNF

Comments will be published once moderated.

See you Thursday!

Year 8 Enigma Challenge Day

10 intrepid year 8 came on a maths trip across to chippenham for a gifted and talented event looking at codes, code breaking and problem solving.

There were 5 sessions, a lecture from a very enthusiastic cambridge profesor, with a real working 2nd world war enigma machine, followed by 4 sessions that covered more code breaking, mystery solving, a celtic knot investigation, and problem solving games and puzzles.

Many thanks to Miss Wenban for organising the trip

Here's what some of the students thought.

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A group of year 8 travelled to Sheldon School to take part in the Enigma Maths Challenge which consists of puzzles, breaking codes, mysteries and solving problems.

The day started in the hall, we joined the other schools that were already there. A mathematician from Cambridge University came in with an enigma machine which was used in World War 2 to make and break codes. We all got the chance to see how the machine worked and it is the only one that is not in a museum.

The mathematician talked to us about his job and what we would be doing during the day. He talked to us that there are jobs that are just breaking codes and solving problems. Some of the best code breakers were used during the war to solve any codes that the Germans sent. After a while a machine was built so that the English could find out what the message said before the German officers knew what it said.

We learnt a lot about the enigma machine and how it worked at what different things mathematicians do as a job. The talk was very helpful and inspiring.

Kayleigh Roberts

[click here for a virtual enigma machine!]

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We did a lesson on code breaking with a mathematician from Cambridge University. He showed us lots of different methods to decipher codes for example very famous codes such as the caesar code. He gave us lots of different codes for us to work them out and decipher them. As we went along we got better and could handle more difficult ones so we definately learnt new skills and we will take them back to JBS. Overall the lesson and the whole day was very good and we had a great time!
Caoimhe Kelly

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Celtic Knots

Practical Puzzles