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Wisconsin Reads

Focus Book: The Bletchley Riddle

Book cover of The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin. The illustration shows a silhouetted person riding a motorcycle through a dark city street at dusk. Airplanes fly overhead, and streetlamps and rooftops frame the scene. The sky fades from red near the horizon to blue above. Large cream-colored title text reads “The Bletchley Riddle,” with the tagline “A House of Secrets, A War of Codes.” Lines of encrypted letters appear along the sides of the cover, suggesting cryptography and World War II codebreaking.

Themes:

  • History of computing and code breaking

  • Human ingenuity in problem-solving

  • Collaboration, perseverance, and STEAM identity

Activities:

  • Statewide chapter-a-day read-along (April 1–May 15) -- on this site

  • Discussion Questions -- on this site

  • Mini-Activities -- on this site

  • Weekly companion lessons and cipher challenges -- on WISELearn

  • Family and library engagement nights (“Decode Together”) ideas -- on WISELearn

  • End-of-unit Student Showcase (virtual) -- on WISELearn

Week 1 — The Mystery Begins

 

April 1 (Wed)

Ch. 1–3

 

Discussion

  • Who are Jakob and Lizzie?
  • What do we learn about their missing mother?

Mini-Activity

 

Caesar Cipher Warm-Up

Click here to download a PDF of a printable Caesar Cipher wheel

Have students encode their names with a shift of 3.

April 2 (Thu)

Ch. 4–6

 

Discussion

 

Why might Bletchley Park be important?

Mini-Activity
 

Codebreaking Observation -- Atbash Cipher


Try your hand at the Abtash Cipher by encoding phrases and looking for patterns in the code.