Heritage Learning –English Heritage Education Service Magazine

Teaching the Vikings has not always been easy for many KS2 teachers. The surviving physical evidence is both diverse in its origins and its nature. This book however, provides a useful compact compendium of resources to help both teachers and pupils develop an understanding.

Subdivided into sections relating to specific types of sources, this book gives suggestions for activities using them, including extension work and differentiated approaches. The photocopiable worksheets are carefully structured to help pupils analyse this wide range of sources and, having worked on a selected few they will soon build up a picture of the Vikings based on their own informed observations and conclusions. How our understanding of Viking society and culture achieved through grave finds is clearly illustrated in the skeleton game. After playing this game pupils will soon appreciate the archaeological processes and methodology which allow us to interpret the remaining evidence of a past society.

There are some particularly good exercises for language work using documentary sources, proverbs, legends, Viking Names and the ancestry of Viking gods. These exercises will definitely contribute to pupils’ knowledge and understanding of this study unit.

David Walmsley, Education Officer, English Heritage