KS1&2 Exploring British Castles with Eye2eye
Britain
Explore British castles. Take an automatic tour around Britain seeing nearly 300 castles covered among Eye2eye
Britain's 11,500 mapped-out panoramas and photos. Create a timeline wall-chart of castles from all eras of history,
created with photos and information copied from Eye2eye Britain. This project follows a topic - of historic and
technical interest - Eye2eye Britain covers well among its 11,500 images, rather than following an individual QCA
study unit. It contributes to several learning objectives across the units. KS2 pupils use Eye2eye Britain as
individuals and small groups for much of this project, but parts use it to good effect on a whiteboard too at KS2 or 1.
Whole class or group activity: an Automatic tour of British Castles
If this is the first time you’ve used Eye2eye Britain for a project, get to know its main controls and what they can do
for you. When Eye2eye Britain starts and its music has finished, if a Help window isn’t already showing, press F1 to
show it. Text in this window (which can be printed if wanted) should help you get going. Teachers: you may want to
help pupils get started.
If you have a whiteboard, start this project with a whole class automatic tour of Britain’s castles using Eye2eye
Britain. Whenever something appears that raises a discussion, stop the tour there, then restart when appropriate.
Eye2eye Britain covers nearly 300 castles, so an automatic tour of all its castles takes about 90 minutes at standard
speed – longer than most KS2 children will benefit from in one go. Decide how to break up or use just part of this
tour with your class – for example, tour from West Wales in one lesson, the top of Scotland in another, and finally
from the SE of England. If only using a fraction of this tour, you could stop and restart it in areas of particular
interest, eg Welsh and Scottish border regions, England’s South coast area, etc.
To take an automatic tour of Britain’s castles:
1) In Eye2eye Britain’s control screen, select the Tour tab to display the topic panel page. Click the topic panel
Castles.
2) If you want to restrict the tour to Scottish castles, for example, still in Eye2eye Britain’s control screen, select the
Search tab to display the text search page. Click New search, then into the top-left text box type Scotland to
pick out Scottish scenes. Choose to search within Titles only, tick the Only search in last found set box to
search within the Castles topic, then click the Search button to do the search. Your tour can be limited to a
county in a similar fashion.
3) Yellow dots now twinkle on the map of Britain to the right wherever there’s an image that matches your search.
Click on the control screen’s Slideshow tab, then the Last set found by Search, Timeline or Tour panel. Next
choose options such as displaying Captions and speed. Click the map by the twinkling dots where you want to
start (eg click to the left of Wales on the map to start from West Wales).
4) If you want to stop the automatic tour to discuss something of interest, click the ‘video stop’ button to the bottom
right of the photos. Press space to view the photos at the place you have stopped. To restart the tour, click the
Eye2eye logo button to the bottom left of the screen to return to the control screen, then click the map to restart
the tour where you clicked.
If you don’t have a whiteboard, ask pupils to watch this in groups (more difficult to stop & discuss).
Another way of selecting castles to tour is by date. To do this, at stages 1) and 2) above, you start from a timeline
period, then within the set for that period, narrow the set to castles:
1) In Eye2eye Britain’s control screen, select the Timeline tab to display the page for choosing photos by date. For
example to tour Norman castles scroll the timeline to select the Norman period of 1066 – 1154. As you do this,
make sure the pupils see the timeline so they see how the chosen period fits with others.
2) Still in Eye2eye Britain’s control screen, select the Search tab to display the text search page. Click New
search, then into the top-left text box type castle to pick out castles. Tick the Only search in last found set box
to search within the Norman period, then click the Search button to do the search.
Whole class exercise: Make a jumbo-sized castle timeline for the wall
For this exercise you will need use of a computer printer, preferably a good quality colour printer that will print
photographs well and reasonably quickly.
Decide what width of wall space you can spare for your finished timeline (3m or more works well if possible). Plan
the date layout of your timeline. Arrange it in historic eras rather than numeric centuries, like Eye2eye Britain’s
timeline. Pick the spread of eras to cover – either from Norman to Victorian (1066 – 1902, six eras) or from Roman
to Victorian (55BC – 1902, eight eras). You will split the class into one group of pupils to research one or two eras
each, so match your choice to the number of groups you have equipment such as a PC for.
Work out what width of wall space each era will have, hence how many photos will fit across it. Eye2eye Britain
prints images as wide as possible on the chosen paper, so smaller if you set paper to portrait rather than landscape.
If using A4 in portrait mode, images will be about 200mm wide. To make smaller prints, use smaller paper sizes.
Often you can still use A4 paper in a printer but set the print paper size smaller, eg A5 portrait, then cut out the
smaller photo and its caption (about 140mm wide for A5 portrait).
Divide the class into groups, preferably one for each era, except one group with both Roman and Anglo-Saxon eras.
Ask each group to explore the castles of their period around Britain, printing out Eye2eye Britain’s photos to fill their
part of the timeline. You may need to help each group get started with their search. The search steps:
1) In Eye2eye Britain’s control screen, select the Timeline tab to display the page for choosing photos by date. For
example to explore Norman castles scroll the timeline to select the Norman period of 1066 – 1154.
2) Still in Eye2eye Britain’s control screen, select the Search tab to display the text search page. Click New
search, then into the top-left text box type castle to pick out castles. Tick the Only search in last found set box
to search within the chosen (eg Norman) period, then click the Search button to do the search.
3) Yellow dots now twinkle on the map of Britain to the right wherever there’s a panorama or photo in your found
set. Click on the map to move into the exploring map - which now highlights all your found places by leaving
active red or yellow dots where they are, switching all others off and browning them out.
4) Double-click on any active red (where there are panoramas) or yellow dot on the explore map to see views
there. Single-click on each image to see the next, then return to the map.
5) To print a photo, right-click on the photo you want, select Print Image, then use the Properties button on the
Print dialog that appears to set paper size, paper direction and other printing options to get good results, then
click OK to do the print. To print from a panorama, stop it spinning, aim where you want then print like a photo.
Each group needs to choose the set of photos it will fill its width with. Ask each group to lay them out on a table in
roughly the right date positions so that they can lay out the required number of photos in date order. If any group has
too many good photos to fit, and there is room on the wall, suggest they place three, one above each other, from
Scotland, England and Wales respectively.
When each group has chosen a good strip of photos, stick them to the wall under a time scale marking each historic
era and dates at its beginning and end.
Pupil writing: British castles
Having finished the timeline, ask pupils to write a short summary in a word processor as individuals or very small
groups. More able pupils can illustrate this work with images copied from Eye2eye Britain as wanted. Each summary
is to answer the following questions in their own way:
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Who built castles?
What were castles for?
Where were they built?
How did castles built change over time?
What is my favourite castle, and why?
This writing is to help pupils look at the timeline – both the parts they and other groups made – and remember the
eras of British history.
Learning Objectives targeted
The above activities target several learning objectives from a range of the KS1&2 History study units:
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Identify features of the area from pictures (What was it like to live here in the past?)
Identify some features of a building through observation and asking and answering questions (What
was it like to live here in the past?)
Place Tudor times on a timeline (What was different about rich and poor people in Tudor times?)
Identify the features of Tudor buildings (How comfortable were the lives of rich Tudor people?)
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Present information to show understanding of the impact of Roman settlement on Britain
Other Projects with Eye2eye Britain
Eye2eye Britain is a versatile resource for many parts of the curriculum, for use by a wide range of age and ability
(users of 6 years and up of average ability can use the software themselves, all ages benefit from whiteboard use).
The ‘recipes’ above for investigating British castle history are some of a huge number of possible ways of selecting
and using its material. For more suggestions, see the other Eye2eye Britain projects on our website
www.eye2eyesoft.co.uk/school.htm , and also the teaching notes that are included in the Eye2eye Britain paperwork.
Having seen some of these suggestions, we hope you will start to invent your own ‘recipes’ for more projects.
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