The Rome City Game

🟡 Introduction

Learning and remembering can follow a linear approach: one element after another, in a well-defined order.

Sometimes, learning this way does not help some students understand what they retain – like reciting a poem or song in a foreign language without meaning.

To encourage more meaningful memory, elements can be organized according to a structure that brings meaning. This activity proposes the collective creation of an imaginary city and memorizing its geography.

It engages essential skills for mathematics: orientation, spatial relationships (left, opposite, north…), hierarchical organization of a system (center/periphery), sequential memory, and teamwork.

🟢 Exercise 1. Build the city through words

📌 Setup:

Organize the group in a circle for better turn-taking. A shared space is created in the center of the circle, representing the city under construction. Each participant speaks in turn, clockwise or counterclockwise, throughout the session.

📌 Spatial orientation

The group agrees on the placement (real or imaginary) of the four cardinal points: North, South, East, West.

📌 Instructions:

• The first participant starts and decides to place a monument, a building, or a street in the city.

For example, they might say:

— In the city of Rome, at the center of the city, there is a square.

• The second participant repeats what the first said and adds a new element.

For example:

— In the city of Rome, at the center of the city, there is a square. In the center of this square, there is a fountain.

• The third repeats everything said by the second participant and adds a new element.

They might say:

— In the city of Rome, at the center of the city, there is a square. In the center of this square, there is a fountain. To the north of the square, there is a church.

• And so on until the last participant. For example, the sequence could become:

— In the city of Rome, at the center of the city, there is a square. In the center of this square, there is a fountain.

To the north of the square, there is a church.

Next to the church, on its right, there is a café.

On the other side of the church, to the left, there is a bakery.

On the opposite side of the square, to the south, there is a pharmacy.

To the east of the square, there is the town hall.

Just to the right of the town hall, perpendicular to the square, is Cloud Street.

On Cloud Street, at number 3, there is the witch’s house.

Still on Cloud Street, opposite the witch’s house, at number 2, there is the doctor’s house.

On the square, to the northwest, is the primary school.

On the west side of the square, to the left of the school, there is a garden.

Between the school and the garden, perpendicular to the square, is Sun Street.

🟢 Exercise 2. Draw the city map

📌 Materials

Paper, colored pencils

📌 Each participant draws the city map as they see it, then the maps can be compared.

📌 Compare the representations. What differences in perspective do you notice? Differences in spatial viewpoint, building dimensions, importance given to certain elements… Each person develops their own imagination based on a common structure.