Differing views of the Vikings
Fun concluding lesson in which pupils produce a balanced, illustrated Zig-Zag book to please a Scandinavian publisher, having looked at differing views of the Vikings. Pupils create their own graphic organiser, having first processed information cards giving then opportunities to classify existing knowledge and add new ideas from recent research.
Learning objectives
- pupils realise that people differ in their view of the Vikings, not just at the time, as they discovered in KQ1 but also later, a point touched on in KQ4;
- they can show that they are aware of both arguments;
- they can explain that the term raiders describes an early part of their contact with Britain whereas ‘traders’ relates to a later stage;
- they can select appropriate evidence from a given list to support their judgements – the most able can independently identify for themselves likely supporting evidence;
- the most able can argue whether history has been fair to the Vikings showing how opinion has changed over time and why;
- they cover aspects such as date of writing, the impact of the early sagas and monks’ accounts, the fact that we like to caricature larger than life figures and that archaeological discoveries
