Pre and Post Materials
Park Planner Grades 6-8
Students will gain more from their field trip experience if it is connected to activities done
in the classroom. Use this guide as a springboard for classroom activities that can be done
before or after your trip. Don’t miss the critical park planner post-trip activity that
complements the trip.
Before Your Field Trip
Vocabulary:
Landfill: An area where large amounts of trash are placed and covered with soil
Landfill Gas: The gas that is released by the landfill, half methane and half carbon dioxide
Leachate: The liquid byproduct of the landfill produced when water runs through the
garbage
Decomposition: Decay; the state or process of rotting
Park Planner: Someone who creates designs for future parks
Activities:
A History of Trash: Have students read this interview about the history of trash in NYC:
http://www.onearth.org/article/digging-into-new-york-citys-trashy-history . This
interview provides background information that will contextualize the human relationship
with waste. After reading the article, students should then come up with similar interview
style questions to ask about trash collection in NYC today. In the course of their upcoming
field trip, they can try to find answers to at least one of their questions.
Weigh The Waste: This hands-on activity gives students insight into what makes up their
trash, with potential to incorporate math and graphing lessons.
http://www.teachengineering.org/view_activity.php?url=collection/cub_/activities/cub_e
nviron/cub_environ_lesson04_activity1.xml#scaling
Build a Model Landfill: students learn about landfills by creating their own. They can even
test if the water has leached out into the neighboring community.
http://www.teachengineering.org/view_activity.php?url=collection%2Fcub_%2Factivities
%2Fcub_enveng%2Fcub_enveng_lesson05_activity2.xml&state=New+York
Critical Reading: Have your students read the attached excerpt from Picking Up by Robin
Nagle and answer questions using the worksheet.
Picking Up by Robin Nagle (p. 113)
“For centuries, the city had consigned her waste to her waters. From the earliest European
settlement, garbage was tossed along the shoreline, first with casual disregard but soon
with the deliberate intention of building land. Eventually, the port’s slips were so filled with
garbage that ships couldn’t berth. In 1857, the state ordered dumping moved farther into
the harbor. Debris floated ashore in New Jersey. The dumping zone was moved again, in
1872, to an area off southeastern Staten Island. The foul loads killed what had been
profitable fishing grounds and oyster beds, and trash that didn’t sink still found its way to
shore—exactly as increasingly irate citizens in New Jersey and Staten Island had predicted.
Waste that did sink started to choke shipping channels. In 1883, more than nine ocean
steamers ran aground when they were arriving in or leaving New York. Garbage, declared
some, was becoming “the ruin of a noble harbor.”
Vocabulary
Consigned: assign; commit decisively or permanently.
Disregard: pay no attention to; ignore.
Deliberate: done consciously and on purpose.
Slip: a ship's or boat's berth between two piers.
Berth: a ship's allotted place at a wharf or dock.
Debris: scattered fragments, typically of something wrecked or destroyed.
Irate: feeling or characterized by great anger.
Q: Why was it bad that New York dumped trash into waterways?
Q: What else do you think people might have done with their garbage in the past?
Q: What do we do with our garbage today?
After your Field Trip
Activities:
Park Planning Exercise: This critical follow-up exercise allows students to synthesize what
they have learned on their field trip and design a plan of their own for Freshkills (45
minutes)
Materials: Blank Park plans for each student (ideally printed large at 11 by 17), fine
markers, colored pencils, regular pencils and erasers, rulers
Goals:
 Students will synthesize the information about the landfill infrastructure,
community, and wildlife they learned on a field trip Freshkills
 Students will gain decision making experience as they make decisions about
planning their version of Freshkills Park
 Students will become familiar with mapping concepts such as creating a key and
scale
 Students will learn more about careers in Parks, and what it means to be a park
planner
Outline:
Part 1: Brainstorming (5 minutes)
 Explain to students that they will get to create their own design for the future
Freshkills Park.
 Have students pull out their park planner booklets from the field trip and review the
last page where they listed how they will take into account the landfill
infrastructure, the needs of the community, and the wildlife in their plans for the
park.
 Give them a minute to brainstorm a list of things that they would like to see in their
park (use this instruction sheet for prompting or as a handout)
Part 2: Create a scale and a key (10 minutes)
 Review the concept of a map’s scale. Pass out the Map and take a look at some of the
parks amenities that have been created to scale. Talk about how the 2,200 acres of
the park is very large, equivalent to 1,667 football fields.
 On a separate sheet of paper, have students use rulers to create scaled icons for the
objects that they might want to add to their map. Have them start making a key on
the bottom of their map.
Part 3: Planning (20 minutes)
 Have students think about which activities go well next to each other, and which
wouldn’t (i.e. would you put a basketball court next to a school, senior center, or
fountain?)
 Talk about the specific building constraints for the site


o Can’t put buildings on top of mounds (fields etc. are OK) because of land
subsidence
o Can’t build in the wetlands (would destroy important habitats and buildings
would sink)
Have students start drawing the items they brainstormed on to their map using
colored pencils and regular pencils
As the planning progresses, prompt with…
o Where will the natural areas be? Explain that you can shade large areas in a
specific color to denote this. Will there be multiple types of natural areas?
Challenge students to distinguish which areas will be grasslands, wetlands,
and forests
o What will be the plan for circulation? How will people get around your park?
Will all the roads be open to vehicles, or maybe just some? None? Will there
be separate paths for bikes, runners and walkers or will they all have to
share?
o How does your plan take into account the issues of the community that you
prioritized in your discussions? What trade-offs might you have to make to
accommodate these needs?
o If time allows: you have a limited budget. Which areas of the park would you
prioritize? Write a three stage plan for implementing your park plan.
Part 4: Review and wrap up (10 minutes)
 Have each student share their favorite feature of their park
 Discuss with students if there were any trade-offs that they had to make to
accommodate the environment, the landfill infrastructure, or the needs of the
community. Ask if anyone put something in their park that they wouldn’t personally
use.
 Discuss what happens next in the park-planning process
o People vote on the plans they like best
o The winning plans get taken back into the community for more input. In the
case of Freshkills Park, this took 3 years
o Plans are implemented in stages because of budgetary constraints
Trash to Treasure: groups of students use the materials from a landfill to create useful
products (time = 90 minutes)
http://www.teachengineering.org/view_activity.php?url=collection/cub_/activities/cub_
weather/cub_weather_lesson06_activity1.xml
Resources
Freshkills Park Website: http://www.nycgovparks.org/park-features/freshkillspark/design-and-construction#tabTop
Grow NYC recycling champions: http://www.grownyc.org/recyclingchampions
NYC Waste Less: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/wasteless/atschool.shtml
National Environmental Education Week: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle curriculum:
http://www.eeweek.org/resources/recycle_curricula.htm
If you develop helpful curricula or find other useful activities, please let us know and we
will include them in this guide to share with other educators. We would also love
comments about how well these activities worked for your class.