Today’s cities are still influenced by planning concepts that shaped the Roman Empire’s planned communities. Rome: City and Empire, a lesson plan from the Discovery Channel’s discoveryschool.com, helps students in grades 6-8 make the connection between past and present.

In small groups, students study the contemporary planned community of their choice, perhaps a place like Reston, Virginia; Seaside, Florida; or Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, New York. Through secondary sources (advertising brochures, newspaper interviews, minutes from council meetings, etc.) they find out what residents like and what they don’t like about their communities.

Then the groups use their findings to brainstorm on the next phase of the lesson: planning their own communities. In both written and illustrated form, groups come up with a set of ideas for their own version of a planned community and present these ideas to the class.

As extensions, students can research Rome’s monumental public arenas, such as the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, and the Roman world’s two great capitals: Rome and Constantinople. The lesson plan is also supplemented by suggested readings, links on Roman history, vocabulary, and a link to a five-video set from the Discovery Channel on Ancient Rome. The video tracks the rise, prosperity, battles, and fall of the empire.

* Click here for a detailed map of the city plan of Rome. Unfortunately it does not allow for dynamic navigation, but you can zoom in and out.