1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools.
Ja'Dell Davis is a Los Angeles native who currently divides her time between New York City and Madison, Wisconsin. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, pursing a PhD in Sociology. Ja’Dell previously taught high school in Philadelphia public schools, and implemented college access and academic enrichment programming in Chester, Pennsylvania and New York City in Manhattan’s Lower East Side neighborhood. Ja’Dell received her B.A. from Swarthmore College with a special major in History and Educational Studies, and a minor in Black Studies. She completed her M.S.Ed in Secondary School Education at the University of Pennsylvania.  In addition to her studies and work in the education field, Ja’Dell is a dancer, musician, avid people watcher, and Scrabble enthusiast.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: Reading: Informational Text
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.1Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.2Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.3Analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated in a text (e.g., through examples or anecdotes).

2. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?
© EschCollection/Getty Images
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?
If you’re lucky enough to be in Manhattan during wintertime, and lucky enough to have a nice hotel room with an incredible view, you may get a glimpse of the city that never sleeps blanketed by a fresh coat of snow.
That’s the southern edge of Central Park providing the winter wonderland of trees. And if you were to leave the cozy confines of your suite and head about a mile south from here, you could see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, which will be lit up tonight.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?1
Map Search
Find the location of Central Park on a map. 2
Web Search
How long has Central Park been a feature of New York City? 3
How big is Central Park? What are some of the main attractions that are part of the park? 4
Thinking
What is unique about the formation of Central Park? 5
What would be the effect on New York and other urban centers if they lacked “green” spaces such as parks?
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?1
Map Search
Find the location of Central Park on a map. 2
Web Search
How long has Central Park been a feature of New York City? 3
How big is Central Park? What are some of the main attractions that are part of the park? 4
Thinking
What is unique about the formation of Central Park? 5
What would be the effect on New York and other urban centers if they lacked “green” spaces such as parks?
You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.

7. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?1
Map Search
Find the location of Central Park on a map.
Using the “maps” link on the Bing search page, and the search term “Central Park New York”, find the location here:

8. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?2
Web Search
How long has Central Park been a feature of New York City?
Possible queries: “history central park” “opening of central park”
From Wikipedia (
Central Park is an urban park in the central part of the borough of Manhattan, New York City . It was initially opened in 1857, on 778 acres (315 ha) of city-owned land (later expanding to its current size of 843 acres (341 ha)[5]).

9. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?3
Web Search
How big is Central Park? What are some of the main attractions that are part of the park?
Possible queries: “size of central park” “how big is central park”
From a Bing search:
1.32 sq miles (3.41 sq km)

10. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?4
Thinking
What is unique about the formation of Central Park?
Possible queries: “history of central park”
From Central Park (
Central Park was the first landscaped public park in the United States. Advocates of creating the park–primarily wealthy
merchants and landowners–admired the public grounds of London and Paris and urged that New York needed a comparable facility to establish its international reputation. A public park, they argued, would offer their own families an attractive setting for carriage rides and provide working-class New Yorkers with a healthy alternative to the saloon. After three years of debate over the park site and cost, in 1853 the state legislature authorized the City of New York to use the power of eminent domain to acquire more than 700 acres of land in the center of Manhattan.
An irregular terrain of swamps and bluffs, punctuated by rocky outcroppings, made the land between Fifth and Eighth avenues and 59th and 106th streets undesirable for private development. Creating the park, however, required displacing roughly 1,600 poor residents, including Irish pig farmers and German gardeners, who lived in shanties on the site. At Eighth Avenue and 82nd Street, Seneca Village had been one of the city’s most stable African-American settlements, with three churches and a school. The extension of the boundaries to 110th Streetin 1863 brought the park to its current 843 acres.

11. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?5
Thinking
What would be the effect on New York and other urban centers if they lacked “green” spaces such as parks?
Students can discuss the the drawback of lack of parks and green space, and they may also interpret the question as examining the benefits of such space.
From City Parks Alliance (
Open space is a key component of urban infrastructure providing valuable economic, health and ecosystem benefits, but many urban neighborhoods still lack access to parks and recreation opportunities. For example:
Investments in Parks Are an Investment in Local Economic Growth − Parks spur new development and increase local property values. Research from Texas A&M University shows at least a 20% increase in value for properties abutting parks.
Plentiful Urban Parks Are Critical to Improving the Health of Americans The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) research shows a clear correlation between easy access to green spaces and likelihood of exercise. Open spaces in cities are an important part of the solution in reducing obesity and its associated public health costs.
City Green Spaces Provide Wide Ranging Ecosystem Benefits – Open space is the new ”green” infrastructure. Urban trees in the U.S. remove 711,000 tons of air pollution annually, at a value of $3.8 billion, not only saving money but also improving public health.

12. What are the benefits and importance of parks in urban centers?
This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question.