Last Friday, Year Six visited the home of the codebreakers as part of their history topic. They thoroughly enjoyed extending their knowledge and understanding of the operations that took place at Bletchley Park. Year 6 loved the fact they stood where history was made. Seeing and learning about the Enigma machines and how they were used to decode German war messages really was fascinating.

Exploring many of the technological advances that Bletchley made first hand and their pivotal role in World War II, left many of the children in awe. They were impressed with the developments the codebreakers made and in such a short space of time. Finding out about the Bombe machine and that it was invented to decipher the German Enigma codes was particularly interesting. The children were amazed that the codebreakers were intercepting and deciphering messages in around 2 and a half hours. This was roughly the same time it would have taken the enemy to have received and read the transcript sent to them!

The inspirational efforts of the men and women who worked in secrecy to gather intelligence was vital; our children recognised how monumental this was in history. We had a fantastic day and we are looking forward to using some of our experiences from Bletchley Park in our future learning.