1. Organizing. Playground designers meet with the custodian and principal, teachers, students, and parents. This team reviews the design curriculum, makes a schedule for these sessions, reviews a packet of park designs and generates a list of what the students can and cannot include in their designs for the park. This team creates a simple map of entrances, exits, delivery pathways, available areas for the new design, and any specific concerns of the principal and custodian. The architect measures the site and begins to create a digital base map.
Week 1 observing. See a slideshow of green and interactive parks, playgrounds, gardens, green roofs and public spaces Each class: Who is the Design Team?: Representatives of Students, Teachers, Parents, School administration and staff, Program Director/Manager, PD consultant, Landscape Architect. 10 min. Go outside, use park, observe school day use, surrounding neighborhood, condition of the schoolyard, sun/shade, slope, size, shape, and living things. Afterschool: Play on playground, observe afterschool use & surrounding neighborhood.
Week 2 Learning more about the people who use the schoolyard: Each class (Indoors or out): 1. Students receive a Design Sketchbook 5 min. 2. Brief review: list of design principles, and PD process 5 min 3. Hands on: Play Model Game (25 minutes) 4. Discuss questions for a brief playground survey, for the school/community. 5 min. Survey is written, printed, and distributed in this first week, and returned the next week. Afterschool: In small groups: discuss PD process, timeline, budget, play Model Game, discuss 3D model, prepare and distribute survey.
Week 3: Learning more about the schoolyard. Each class: (outdoors) Meet classes and dismiss classes from schoolyard 1. Brief review: list of design principles, and PD process. 5 min 2. Class breaks into 2 groups. Activity A: Half the class plays, the other half observes the way they are using the site. They relate what the students observe to design principles. They make notes in their sketchbooks about what people are doing and where. They note age, gender. 20 min. Activity B: The half of the class that played before now measure the site perimeter. The group that observed before now plays. Each group measures one side. Students record measurements in their sketchbooks. 20 min. Afterschool: Play outdoors, observe play, observe and chalk shadows, measure site. Review and discuss survey results, desig n principles, budget, timeline, and PD process. Ongoing: Survey results, as they come in each week, are posted in each classroom.
A trip to a completed playground Field Trip. The whole team visits a playground designed by a student/adult team (add location and date) Week 4 Putting what we know about the people and the place on maps: 1. Each student receives a map of the playground with perimeter measurements completed by students with the architect last week. 5 min. 2. Small groups: students review in their sketchbooks and show on the basemap: A) where play and other activities happen now on the map and conditions of the site. B) street names, cardinal directions, entrances and exits, delivery and emergency vehicle pathways, and handicapped entrances. 3. A chalk drawing on the board confirms the information in B, above. Students correct any errors on their own group’s base m ap.
Week 5 Experimenting with our first design ideas: Each class (indoors). 1. 2D model. In small groups: Students receive base maps of the site, drawn to scale (by the landscape architect or surveyor), with the me asurements that have been gathered by students. They receive templates that represent play areas from the survey results. (One set of templates, one map for each group). The survey results are written on the board and discussed. Students receive a copy of survey results to put in their design sketchbooks. 2. Students become familiar with the map and the templates, and what each represents. 3. After organizing templates by color, groups begin to place templates on the map. If groups have generated a design by the end of the session, a digital photo is taken of it. 4. groups present their maps and their peers, teachers, community, principal & custodian give comments on them. Afterschool: Work on model, collages, bulletin boards, posters (in small groups)
Week 6 Generating designs, incorporating feedback 1. In the same small groups as the previous week, students generate designs. Students review survey results from their design sk etchbooks, make sure designs meet survey results. (In this week the landscape architect generates 2 alternatives from the digital photos of student design ideas.) Afterschool: Work on model, collages, bulletin boards, posters, Interview Precinct liaison, parents, community representatives
2 design alternatives, Harlem, CPES I, II, III
2 design alternatives, Brooklyn, PS 20/A&L
Week 7: Work on design details: field and court dimensions, play equipment, garden areas, seating details, green materials. 1. In the same small groups, students review the 2 design alternatives created from their ideas. They generate the one on the model they prefer, and make adjustments to it. The principal and custodian join the class for the last 10 minutes and comment on designs. 2. Students each receive standard court dimensions, play equipment & garden catalog, and ideas/restrictions (no plastic slides, no live grass, etc) Teachers spend time between our PD sessions reviewing court dimensions and catalogs with students, to prep for the play equipment design session. Afterschool: review design alternatives, complete 3D model, review catalog.
Parents Association meeting: sometime this month. Students present to community two final designs developed by the landscape architect/principal/student/community design team. In addition to the design presentation, stewardship and community/parent involvement in the completed playground is discussed. Week 8: By this week, the afterschool group will have completed a finished 3D model, with moveable templates of play areas. 1. Review 3D model in each class. Move templates to represent the two alternatives, and be sure everyone is clear on them.
2. Play equipment design session. Classes and Afterschool work with architect and playground equipment designer to design details (field and court layout, gardens, playground equipment) on CAD computer program. Show locations of these details on the 3D model.
Week 9: Outdoors: Classes review public comments from PTA meeting, make final adjustments to design and select the final plan from the 2 alternatives.
Afterschool and classes create chalk outlines of playground design and play on their design for the first time.
Construction of the playground will begin (add season/year)
The new park should be completed by (add season/year).
Cultivate playground stewardship, create gardening programs, and grow food for the school cafeteria in the completed Playground