Giving directions

Activity name: What on earth?

  👉Exercise description: 

One student is chosen to play the role of the tour guide and the rest of the group are the tourists. The teacher will each time inform about the exact destination and the building/monument/attraction where the tourists should arrive and the guide should know how to direct them through his or her indications in the free Google Earth tool.

For example, if the chosen destination is London, the aim of the activity can be to get to the "London Eye", in this case, by means of the correct indications of the guide, the tourists must get to the London Eye through the 3D map and the real-time camera of the city of London with the Google Earth tool. 

Those students who get all 7 strategic points right will be rewarded with 30 minutes extra break time or, if this is not possible due to a lack of staff, the students will be able to play the role of teacher in the next class.

 Fuente: Google Earth

This could be an example about how the students would see The London Eye area:

🎨 Methodology:   

With the Google Earth tool, teachers can create their own projects according to their convenience, they can choose all the places on the planet, even the top of a mountain or life under the sea, which I recommend for when studying the vocabulary of the marine world.

The steps to follow for the development of this educational resource are as follows:

1- Create the project on the place where the directions are going to be studied by choosing 7 destination points where the guide will direct the tourists.

2- Using internet access, a computer and a projector, show the map where all the pupils can see it.

3- Choose on each occasion the student who will be evaluated as the guide.

4- The rest of the group, i.e. the tourists, must have a digital educational resource in class (e.g. Tablet) with internet access to follow the guide's instructions.

5- Those students who get all 7 destinations right will be rewarded with an extra 30 minutes of break time.

                                      

🎯 Main goals: 

The aim is to get the student used to creating useful English phrases such as giving and receiving directions, as well as assimilating the vocabulary learnt about the parts of the street (traffic lights, zebra crossing, building, church, pharmacy etc.). 

The interaction of indirect questions between the guide and the tourists will also be valued, such as:

A: Hello Pedro, nice to meet you. How do I get to the destination point?

B: Hello Alba, nice to meet you too. Firstly, You go straight and the 3rd street turn right.

A: Thanks for your information

On the other hand, the aim of this activity is to help students develop their communication skills and remove their fears of expressing themselves in a new language.

In addition, through the Google Earth tool, the essence of the chosen place, its culture and its own characteristics are shown in real time, which allows the student to get to know new countries and resources in depth from their own classroom chair.

👀 Interesting links: 

Link to download Google Earth on your computer.

Tutorial about how to create projects  on Google Earth