Indiana ELA Standard: 4.RF.1

Valentine’s Day Codes

Teach your students about basic cryptography and code making.

Words Within Words: February

How many words can you find within February?

Words Within Words: Chocolate

How many words can you find within Chocolate?

Word Ladder: Wild to Tame (5-steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Words Within Words: PATRICK

How many words can you find within Patrick?

Words Within Words: RAINBOW

How many words can you find within rainbow?

Words Within Words: IRELAND

How many words can you find within Ireland?

Words Within Words: CORNMAZE

How many words can you find within CORNMAZE?

Words Within Words: COBWEB

How many words can you find within COBWEB?

Words Within Words: ORNAMENT

How many words can you find within ORNAMENT?

Words Within Words: WREATH

How many words can you find within WREATH?

Words Within Words: SCARECROW

How many words can you find within “scarecrow”?

Words Within Words: CRANBERRY

How many words can you find within “cranberry”?

Path Cipher (Codes Part 4)

Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.

Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)

Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!

Words Within Words: GENERAL

How many words can you find within “general”?

Words Within Words: Intro (SOLDIER)

How many words can you find within SOLDIER? 20? 35? 50? Even more!?

Words Within Words: WESTERN

How many words can you find within WESTERN?

Words Within Words: TEACHER

How many words can you find within TEACHER?

Word Pyramids

Start with a one letter word, add another letter, then add another. How tall can you make the pyramid?

Word Pyramid: M to CAMPUS

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Pyramid: U to Brush

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Words Within Words: PARKING

How many words can you find within PARKING?

Words Within Words: TROMBONE

How many words can you find within TROMBONE?

Analyze Suffixes: -en

What exactly does adding -en to a word do? Find the pattern. Then find the words that break it.

Words Within Words: AIRPLANE

How many words can you find within airplane?

Words Within Words: LEOPARD

How many words can you find within “leopard”?

Words Within Words: SATURN

How many words can you find within Saturn?

Word Pyramid: P to PLAINS

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Pyramid: T to PLANET

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect T and PLANET?

Word Pyramid: O to Stones

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Pyramid: I to LIONS

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Pyramid: H to CRASH

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Ladder: East to West (4 Steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Work to Hard (4 Steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder – Cold to Cool (5-Steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Arm to Leg (6-steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Kid to Old (5-steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Sky to Red (5-steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder – Sun to Hot (5-steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder – Tea to Hot (5-steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Jotto

Who can guess the codeword first?

Words Within Words: MENORAH

How many words can you find within MENORAH?

Ghost

Ghost is a word-building game for two players. The first person to create an actual word loses.

Words Within Words: NUTCRACKER

How many words can you find within NUTCRACKER?