Tool Tuesday: ReVISITING Google Earth

With the school year back in full swing, our posts will resume highlighting simple tools, tech or non-tech, that we can use to teach about narrative and expository language in conjunction with MindWing’s methodology. In the past, I have highlighted the now-simpler Google Earth and wanted to revisit this topic in the light of some recent sessions I have had with students. Though Google Earth initially was a complicated downloadable application, it has evolved into a web version accessible by simply navigating to it in your browser (earth.google.com).

I recently used Google Earth with some second-graders who had never seen it and they were amazed! Our lessons started as a context for exploring Ward/Jacobsen’s STOP strategy for situational awareness, which encourages students to think about Space, Time, Objects and People of a location or situation. A helpful connection is Social Thinking^®’s concept of the social detective observing at the cue of a doorway to a transitional space. In our group, we navigated to a local public library, used Street View, and made predictions about about the Space, Time, Objects and People of the setting (of course, using the Story Grammar Marker^® Setting icon, and actions within the setting corresponding to the Time aspect of the mnemonic).

Looking at a public location from above will generally give you the opportunity to review pictures of inside the space as well, enhancing the visual support for the activity.

Like the mouse with the cookie, if you give your students Google Earth, they will want to look at their own house. Visiting your and your students’ houses offers all kinds of expository and narrative opportunities. For example, the kids were confused about when the images were taken and why there might be differences from what it looks like at their homes now. This led to some expository cueing:

You can model and then elicit some personal narratives given the home scene you view. This one relates to the busy street I live on:

I hope you have a fun time taking virtual field trips and telling stories!