A ready 45-minute lesson about your town

One lesson, no extra preparation. The children place buildings in a town in the Little Mayor game, the game explains every decision, and you close with a conversation about your own town. Ages 9 to 11.

What you need

Tablets, phones or computers with internet. One per pair is enough, the game has a mode where two children take turns.
A projector or a board for the class code and the leaderboard.
The worksheet from the lesson plan, one per child or pair.

The lesson

Minutes	What happens
0 to 5	Opening question: what does a town need so that people live well in it? Children name things, you write them on the board. A school, a playground, a shop, a doctor appear, and in the end water and waste.
5 to 10	On the Class mode page tap Create a code for the lesson and write the code on the board. Children open starosta.alho.cz, tap I play at school and copy the code. First game on the Pond map, Easy difficulty.
10 to 25	Children play two or three games. After each they see the score and, for every building, one sentence on why it gained or lost points. The Try the map again button leads them to fix the mistake right away.
25 to 33	Show Class mode on the projector: how many games, the average, the most common mistakes. Read the most common mistake aloud and ask why it matters. The children explain it themselves, the game already told them.
33 to 42	Worksheet, part "And at home?": where is the school, the nursery, the sewage plant, the playground in your town? Do the rules from the game hold? What would the children change?
42 to 45	Class leaderboard on the projector and a class certificate to print. Homework: a link to the Mayor's path up to level 3.

What the children learn

That somebody plans a town, and by which rules: a nursery within 400 m of housing, a school away from the main road, a sewage plant by the water and downstream, big houses not right next to small ones.
That a decision has consequences you can measure: the game scores and explains every decision at once.
To argue: why a building belongs here and not there. In Class mode you do it together over the real mistakes of the class.

Curriculum links

Geography and social studies at primary level: settlements and their functions, the local area, public services, rules of living together, protecting the environment. Cross-curricular: environmental education (human settlement, people and their surroundings) and citizenship (the town as a community, decision making). Key competences: problem solving, communication, cooperation. The Czech plan quotes the national framework (RVP ZV); match it to your own curriculum.

Variants

Second lesson: Harder with a budget (200 million, not everything fits, children choose and count) or Fix the town (a finished bad town, 5 moves to repair).
Project day: the Big city map, pairs, a printed A1 board on the table with building cards, exploring your own town on an online map.
Homework: in Class mode you generate a link with a goal, such as the Mayor's path up to level 3. Children play at home, you see in class how many levels were passed.
Competition between classes: every week there is a Weekly challenge, the same town for all classes; the ranking of classes is in Class mode, and a poster for the notice board is ready to print.

The lesson is ready in 5 minutes. Create a class code, write it on the board and the children tap I play at school. No sign-up, free, on phones, tablets and computers.

Create a code for the lesson

Class mode and the printables are in Czech for now; the game itself is in English with ?lang=en. If you teach in English and want the class pages in English, tell us, it moves them up the list.