Teachers TV: Primary History - Vicious Vikings

Three Great Lesson Ideas for primary history, identifying and understanding what life was like for people in Viking times.

At Headley Park School, Bristol, teachers use inventive ways to engage children’s thinking about the Vikings. In Viking Comic Strip teacher Tim Browse asks children to imagine they are different characters during a Viking raid. They act out their role (monks, Vikings) using freeze frame images depicting the point in the story. They then create a comic strip from their drama using thought bubbles and photographs.

This activity combines an experiential element with speaking, listening and thinking skills. In Archaeological Dig, teacher Alexa Vickery asks the children to dig up Viking objects out of sand, identify and draw them, deciding if the object is really Viking from their learnt knowledge of Viking life. Norse or not Norse is a fun game in which children have to write a true and a false explanation of an object and present it to the class. It asks the children to draw on skills of writing and persuasion, to build convincing argument.