Case 02

Case: Tailwind

Year 6 · Geography & Science · 60–75 minutes · two ways to run it: solo on devices, or whole-class on a projector

Every autumn, an Arctic tern called STERNA flies from the Farne Islands to Antarctica: the longest migration of any animal on Earth. Three weeks into this year’s journey, a solar storm knocked out her satellite tag. Your student is the Bureau’s Migration Desk duty officer, alone on the night shift: rebuild her route from a wall of scrambled evidence, and point the recovery dish at exactly the right patch of ocean. One shot.

Run this Case All missions

A route map of the Atlantic drawn in the Bureau's hand: a
dotted flight path running from the Farne Islands south
past West Africa, with pinned markers along it.

What’s different about this one

Tailwind is our first open-board Case: all nine evidence items sit on the Situation Room wall from the start, and students work them in any order, point-and-click-adventure style. It is a Case rather than an Operation because it runs across two sittings: designed for a single player across roughly 60–75 minutes, with progress saved automatically, so it splits cleanly into two lessons (most classes: two 35–40 minute sessions). There is no timer, no fail state, and no way to guess the ending: the final lock has 480 possible entries and only the evidence narrows it to one.

Curriculum coverage

Geography (KS2): latitude and longitude, the Equator, hemispheres, the Tropics and the polar circles; time zones and the Prime Meridian; climate zones and biomes; six-figure grid references, the eight-point compass, and bearings with distance; continents and oceans throughout, on real maps.

Science (Year 6): adaptation to environment (Evolution & Inheritance) is load-bearing in four of the nine clues; classification by observable characteristics (Living Things & Their Habitats) via a real identification key; food chains revisited through the Southern Ocean.

A dense field of pale green and brown single-celled organisms, chains and spirals among them, seen through a microscope. — The Southern Ocean food chain, as Reference File R6 gives it.

A translucent pink shrimp-like animal with black eyes and long antennae, photographed against dark water. — The Southern Ocean food chain, as Reference File R6 gives it.

How it plays

Each solved clue posts a finding to the wall: pins get plotted, false signals fade, a route lights up, candidate destinations get stamped ELIMINATED. Six candidate destinations are pinned from the start; the evidence rules out two, and the student’s own reasoning must decide between the final four at the console. Two clues (a ranger’s report and a trawler captain’s log) corroborate each other, so one stuck clue never blocks a student. A free hint sits behind every item, and six in-fiction Reference Files carry all the content knowledge: a student who has never met a grid reference can still finish.

Before the lesson

Print the Bureau Reference Shelf (7 pages): one per student, or a shared set per table. This is the knowledge scaffold.
Print the Agent Evidence Log (6 pages): one per student. All written working happens here; the screen only ever accepts final answers.
Keep the Teacher Answer Key to yourself: it includes worked answers, the console reasoning, common wobbles, and what success looks like on paper.
Print the certificate for finishers (or use the digital one the site issues).

The Evidence Log’s candidates table (“ruled out because…”) is the assessment gold: it captures the reasoning, not just the answers.

Differentiation

Untimed by design, with no lockouts. The Reference Files are the built-in scaffold; hints nudge method, never answers. Fast finishers get a speed-calculation bonus for solving both halves of the corroborating pair, and a “second summer” maths tail in the debrief. For students working below age-related expectations, run it across two sittings and sit the Reference Shelf on the desk from the start.

No devices? Run it on the projector

Tailwind runs as a whole-class Case with nothing but your screen. The board goes on the projector; the nine evidence documents go into hands as the printed Clue Card Pack; each table becomes a Bureau desk working different clues in parallel, reporting findings to you (the Handler), who enters them on the board. The final console is a whole-class moment: route agreed on paper, one duty officer, one shot. Because six tables work at once, the whole Case fits a single lesson in this mode. The Answer Key’s page 3 is your run-sheet: which cards to seed to which tables, and how the ending plays.

To launch it, choose Run as class instead of Assign to students: no student logins needed; the session belongs to your account, is named per class, and saves between sittings if you need two.

Downloads

Bureau Reference ShelfStudents · 7 pages · 4.2 MB
Agent Evidence LogStudents · 6 pages · 512 KB
Clue Card PackProjector / no-device mode · 7 pages · 824 KB
Teacher Answer KeyTeachers onlyTeachers only · 3 pages · 300 KB
Junior Agent CertificatePrint for finishers · 1 page · 496 KB
↓ Download all (ZIP)Everything above, foldered

Image credits

Phytoplankton · University of Rhode Island / Stephanie Anderson, NASA Earth Expeditions · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · Cropped
Antarctic krill · Uwe Kils · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Cropped
Small fish · Atle Grimsby · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 · Cropped
Arctic tern · J. J. Audubon, The Birds of America (1835) · New York Public Library · Public domain · Cropped and downscaled
Route map · The Brain Bureau · The Brain Bureau