History that keeps going after the bell

How it works

1. Make a class group on Play together, choose the episode and, if you like, a shared start time.
2. Share the six-letter code or the link. Pupils sign in with an email address. No passwords, no names required.
3. They play outside the lesson. Toulon takes about five days, a few minutes at a time. Characters send a notification when they need an answer.
4. You follow along. On the group page you see who has started and finished, and the totals of the class. Nobody, including you, sees who chose what.
5. Discuss. Use the totals on the board, and the questions below.

Lesson plan: Toulon, December 1793

For pupils from about 13 years. Two short lessons with five days of play in between.

Goals

• Pupils can explain why Toulon was occupied in 1793 and why the fort on the hill decided the siege.
• Pupils can tell the difference between what is known from sources, what is plausible and what is invented.
• Pupils can explain why one young officer was noticed, and what that says about the Revolution.

Lesson 1 (20 minutes): before playing

• Context: France at war with half of Europe, royalists in Toulon open the port to the British (August 1793).
• The map: the inner and outer harbour, the forts. Whoever holds the hill controls the harbour.
• Start the class group and turn on notifications together.

During the week

• Pupils play at home or on the way. Labels show afterwards whether their choice was historical, plausible, daring or free.
• The archive in the game unlocks short texts about the real people.

Lesson 2 (40 minutes): afterwards

• Show the class totals. Where did the class follow history, and where not? Why?
• Compare one choice with what really happened. How do we know? (Reports by Dugommier, letters, later memoirs.)
• Talk about the “small moments”: the rammer, the letter full of earth. Why are some of these called “tradition”, and how reliable is that?
• What happened after the siege: the reprisals against the people of Toulon. Who is missing from the story of the hero?

Questions for the discussion

• Would you have attacked in the storm? What did you know, and what did you not know?
• Rumours and scouts: how did you decide which report to believe? How did people check news in 1793?
• The game rewards nothing for being “historical”. Did you still try to do what Napoleon did? Why?
• Who wrote the history of Toulon, and who did not get to write it?

Three perspectives in one class

Toulon can be played as Buonaparte (the commander), Sergeant Junot (a soldier at the battery) or Thérèse (an invented washerwoman inside the occupied town). The siege runs the same for all three, so the class lives one night from three sides.

• Split the class in three. Let each third pick a different perspective at the start. Everyone is in the same class group; the totals are kept per perspective.
• Afterwards, compare. What did the commander know that the townspeople did not? What did the sergeant see that never reached the reports? What did “victory” mean in the town?
• Sources and fiction. Junot is real, and some of his scenes come from tradition and memoirs. Thérèse is invented, and the game says so. Ask pupils which parts of her night they think are based on sources, and how they would check.
• Who is missing from the story? The reprisals against the people of Toulon after the siege are part of Thérèse’s ending and the archive. A good start for a conversation about whose history gets told.

Extra questions

• Thérèse had to choose between the boats, the cellar and the tricolour. What would you have done, and what did thousands of inhabitants really do?
• Junot followed Bonaparte for the rest of his life. What does his letter to his father tell us about how people saw Bonaparte in 1793?
• Is a story told from the town less “historical” than one told from headquarters? Why, or why not?

Privacy in class

• Pupils only need an email address. A school address works.
• In a class group, pupils see only the totals. You see names (or the part before the @) and whether someone has started, never what they chose.
• There are no ads, no tracking and no payments. See the privacy statement.

Make a class group About the series

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