Preparing your students for their visit will greatly enhance their experience. Use these free pre-visit activity packets to introduce your students to the topics that will be covered in their workshops.
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Minute by Minute: The Role of Intelligence in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Use this pre-visit activity packet to prepare your students for the case-based simulation in which they will play the role of intelligence analysts at the CIA in 1962. By examining declassified intelligence documents and U-2 photographs at various stages of the crisis, students “live” the crisis rather than only read about it. Students are challenged to make decisions and recommendations based on primary documents and photos. The outcome of the crisis is in their hands: will their analysis provide President Kennedy with the information he needs to avoid nuclear catastrophe? -
Operation Code Cracker
This pre-visit activity packet will help your students prepare for their mission as code crackers. Addressing national mathematic curriculum standards, this program provides an up close and personal viewing of one of the Museum’s most famous artifacts, the German WWII Enigma Machine. Students then adjourn to the museum classroom where they become intelligence officers in the field. In teams, they run a short mission in which they use various methods of enciphering and deciphering messages. -
Spy’s Eye View
It takes some preparation to interrogate a spy! Use this pre-visit activity packet to prepare your students for their unique opportunity to debrief with a former CIA Case Officer or Analyst. In this 30-minute program, students will learn about the life of an intelligence professional, how intelligence is collected and analyzed, and the role of spying in American government. -
Operation Spy Student Adventure
Prepare your students for their intense spy mission! Use this pre-visit activity packet to train your students for their action-packed role as U.S. intelligence officers on an international mission to locate a missing nuclear device on the verge of being sold to a rogue nation. After their 60-minute experience, students will participate in a 30-minute debriefing that will engage them about the outcomes of their decisions and teach them about the real intelligence case of scientist A.Q. Kahn, considered to be the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, who inspired the storyline in Operation Spy.