Vicious Vikings

Discover these creative approaches to teaching Key Stage 1/2 pupils about the Viking period. Three teachers demonstrate their inspirational ideas to use in history lesson planning.

Placing great emphasis on skills for learning, Tim Browse, Pete Jackson and Alexa Vickery from Headley Park Primary School in Bristol aim to teach primary pupils the skills of a historian so they can transfer these skills to other historical periods.

In Viking Comic Strip, Tim asks children to imagine they are different characters during a Viking raid, combining an experiential element with speaking, listening and thinking skills. The pupils act out their role using freeze-frame images depicting a point in the story. They then create a comic strip from their drama using thought bubbles and photographs.

In Archaeological Dig, Alexa asks the children to dig objects out of sand, identify and draw them, and decide if the object is really related to the Vikings, based on their knowledge of Viking life.

Finally, 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. Pete asks the pupils to draw on skills of writing and persuasion to build a convincing argument.