Lesson Plans & Facilitation
Ready-to-use plans, discussion prompts, and tips for running a great session.
Workshop Plan (30–45 minutes)
Title: Can You Balance the Books and Shape the Future?
Audience: Secondary students (Years 9–13), adaptable for adults/community
Learning Objectives
- Explain the basic structure of a public budget (revenue & expenditure).
- Use a digital tool to explore and adjust a real government or council budget.
- Identify trade-offs and justify funding decisions.
- Work in groups to build and present priorities; reflect on real-world impact.
Suggested Agenda
- Warm-up (5–7 min): Quick value-based dilemmas to surface trade-offs.
- Demo (5–7 min): Walk through controls; explain surplus/deficit indicators.
- Group Challenge (10–15 min): Teams adjust the budget to hit their goals.
- Presentations (15 min): 1-minute share-outs; optional vote or debate.
- Wrap-up (5–10 min): Reflection prompts and real-world links.
Adapting for different session lengths
15 minutes
Skip the warm-up. Set a 10-minute game timer. Do a quick 3-minute whole-class debrief: "What surprised you?"
30 minutes
Short warm-up (2 min). 15-minute game. 10-minute debrief with 2-3 discussion prompts. Skip presentations.
60 minutes
Full warm-up + demo. 20-minute game. Group presentations (1 min each). Extended debrief with "Going Deeper" prompts. Optional: run it a second time.
Discussion Prompts
Ready-to-use questions you can ask before, during, and after the game.
Before the Game
- If you had to cut $1 billion from the government budget, where would you start – and what would you refuse to touch?
- What do you think the government spends the most money on? Take a guess before we find out.
- Is it possible to make everyone happy with a budget? Why or why not?
During the Game
- Which team is spending the most on housing? What are they giving up to do that?
- Has anyone noticed what happens to public confidence when you cut health or education?
- Are any teams running a deficit? What choices led to that?
After the Game
- Did any team manage to keep confidence high AND build lots of houses? What trade-offs did they make?
- What surprised you most about how the budget works?
- If you could change one decision your team made, what would it be and why?
Going Deeper
- How does this connect to real decisions the NZ government makes in the annual Budget?
- Why might two people with the same information make completely different budget choices?
- What would happen if a real government tried to please everyone – is that even possible?
Tips for a Great Session
Run it twice
Students make very different choices the second time around. Run the same class twice and compare results – it's one of the best ways to spark discussion about values and priorities.
Pair it with current events
Before the game, share a recent news story about government spending (health funding, housing, infrastructure). After the game, ask students how their budget compared to what the government actually did.
Use the reflection questions
When creating a class, add 2–3 post-game reflection questions in the Questions tab. Students answer these right after the game while their thinking is fresh – and you can review all answers from your dashboard.
Let them fail
Running a deficit is a learning moment, not a mistake. Resist the urge to guide students toward a "right" answer – the messier the budget, the better the discussion afterwards.
Facilitate the debrief
The game is the hook, but the debrief is where the real learning happens. Spend at least a third of your session time on discussion. Ask "why" more than "what".
Use exports for assessment
From your dashboard, you can export game results as CSV or XLSX. The detailed export includes every budget change each team made – useful for marking or portfolio evidence.