Description

Welcome! This listing features a one-of-a-kind full-page cryptogram about earthquakes. A cryptogram is a type of puzzle with an encrypted text. In this cryptogram, students will decipher a number code to reveal the letters to form the summary statement text about earthquakes. The header on both of the student pages has a horizontal letter-number assignment table. Students start out the activity knowing the number assignments for eight letters.

The entire message appears as a series of blank lines grouped into what will become words. There are numbers located under approximately fifty percent of the letter lines, some of which students start out knowing and most others they don’t. As students fill in the words of the puzzle with the help of a word bank table on the bottom of the second page, they will discover the number assignments for additional letters. Students can keep track of their number-letter assignment findings on the tables at the top of each page.

For this earthquake cryptogram puzzle, students decode 83 words to form five sentences that summarize the names, abbreviations, origin, movement, degree of damage, and comparative speed of the various seismic waves. Key terms covered include: focus, epicenter, seismic waves, primary waves, secondary waves, surface waves, seismologist, earthquake, crustal plates, pressure, and Richter scale.

I use this lesson in my seventh grade earth science class, but it could also be used as a reinforcement activity in a high school earth science course. It takes my seventh grade students approximately 40 minutes to complete the puzzle.

This document will become editable upon conversion to Microsoft Word using an Adobe Acrobat Reader DC program. I provided a complete answer key. This activity complements the following activities about earthquakes in my store:

Earthquake Unit Study Guide
Volcanoes and Earthquakes Homework Quiz
Volcanoes and Earthquakes Crossword Puzzle Set

I also offer fun, original cryptogram puzzles available about plate tectonics, the Theory of Continental Drift, igneous rocks, metamorphic rocks, and sedimentary rocks.