This week we have been doing some writing from the point of view of Rosie Trilling, a character from the book Street Child by Berlie Doherty.

I wanted to help illustrate to the children the grand London house that Rosie was working at in the book. I thought that the StreetView layer in Google Earth would allow me some high quality imagery, I just needed a real location in London somewhere.

I sent this Tweet out:

Anyone know of a London st of grand Victorian homes, with black iron railings + 3 or 4 floors high, want to look in GE Streetview10:51 AM Apr 22nd

And was pleased to get some great suggestions and this one from @didactylos the Director of Marden City Learning Centre. I was able to pick out a road to search from Roger’s Tweet and so set to it.

Streetchild street

I did a quick search for Kensington High Street as he suggested and briefly scanned the area, I soon found a street that looked ideal.

I then switched on the StreetView layer and zoomed in and the first view was a beautiful 3 storey house identical to the one described in the book. Black iron railings and even steps down to the servants quarters and kitchen in the basement.

We turned the camera to take a look at the impressive row of housing and discussed what we could see in the image that might have been there at the turn of the century. We also discussed what we may have seen, heard and smelled if we were Rosie standing on that Victorian street.

The tweets allowed me to access exactly what I needed drawing upon experience I did not have, and StreetView in Google Earth provided the class with rich imagery to help with their diary entries that they continued with. Some of the children did some drawings of the houses we had seen and it helped to spark their imagination and provided a much better understanding of the sort of scene we were working with.

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