Year 6 go to Bletchley Park

As part of the code camp at the end of term, a small group of Year 6 children spent a day discovering the incredible achievements of Britain’s WW2 codebreakers in the place where it all happened, Bletchley Park. By exploring the beautiful mansion, the WW2 rooms and the many interactive displays, the children learned the story of this once top-secret operation and found out more about the brilliant minds and complex machines that made such an impact on the outcome of WW2. A highlight for the children was definitely the immersive film in the D-Day exhibition.

The afternoon provided the opportunity to visit the National Museum of Computing and learn more about the development of computing from the ultra-secret pioneering efforts of the 1940s including getting up close to the Colossus. An opportunity to do some code-breaking of their own using Lorenze-encrypted messages proved fascinating. The large systems and mainframes of the 1950s–70s just amazed the children, and the opportunity to play retro games on computers of the 1980s–90s provided much entertainment. The children became codebreakers themselves, solving clues as they went and earning a prize at the end of the tour.