When teaching history I always found that role play appealed to most children and so after a couple of lead up lessons on how the Vikings invaded Britain, by plundering and pillaging villages and monasteries, I decided that this would best be taught by experiencing it for themselves. How I regretted the decision.
The Vikings Arrived at our School
One of my favourite subjects when I was teachingwas history. There were certain periods which I particularly liked and one of these was the Viking era. During those early days of teaching I was not that sure how to approach the subject with the class of six year olds I was teaching at the time. We did not have a curriculum to follow so most of what I had learnt about Vikingscame from textbooks. Six year olds even now are not interested in using textbooks as they haven’t been reading for all that long, so I had to find a method of putting the subject over that would capture their imaginations.
Without giving any warning to the class next door we charged in and plundered their books, pens and other belongings, making an enormous hullabaloo as we were doing it. The children in that class sat there looking totally bemused, as did the teacher whose lesson we had wrecked. Not satisfied with that my class went on the rampage throughout the school, pillaging what they could on their travels. Eventually I called a halt to the activities and brought the class back to base, where everything that had been stolen was dropped onto the ever growing pile in the middle of the classroom.
Unfortunately we did not know which things belonged to which class and we had the most dreadful time returning items to their owners, much to the disdain of the teaching staff who thought I had gone mad. The children did however learn something from the experience.
In the years that followed I was much wiser and I invited a group of Viking reenaction warriors in to teach the children about what life was like during Viking times. The children tried out various skills and crafts and learnt such a lot. We also had a Viking day once a year when they would dress up and carry out Viking tasks throughout the day.
The final activity of the topic each year was to do a school assembly to show what had been learnt. Again the children would dress up in Viking costumes, something which they always enjoyed doing. One year we made the side of a Viking boat which several children sat behind on an attached bench, and which they rowed across the stage. We built a bridge to represent London Bridge which the Vikings had pulled down during one of their visits, hence the song, ‘London Bridge is falling down’, and the children acted that story out. They would also relate some of the sagas about Norse gods and accompany these with pictures they had painted and poems they had written, so by the end of the topic I think that each year group was well versed in Viking history, and as a teacher I too became much more knowledgeable
I remember studying Vikings at school and it was not as exciting as you described it in your anecdote. As a result, I had no interest in it at all. I believe that these kids must totally love their lessons after all what you do for them. 
Hehehehahaha..wish I had a teacher like you Christine Ramsay..I would have paid more attention in class
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