Make the Viking Long Ships!

This week I bumped into an amazing, experienced  teacher’s aid that I hadn’t seen for a while and she said to me “I have such fond memories of attending your History classes, those were the good old days, making Viking boats and all that other fun stuff”. I responded with the normal thank you’s and added  “surely the History teachers are still doing things like this when you visit the History classes?” Her response both surprised me and upset me- “no they don’t”. 

This made me ponder, so why are teachers at this school apparently not doing these activities anymore? Is it the mountains of paperwork, meetings, reporting and marking preventing them from creating and preparing these activities? Is it the move away from the use of paper/cardboard and the move towards digital activities? Is it the overloaded syllabus and a lack of time to “fit in” these more hands-on activities? Or is it something else that I haven’t considered? Perhaps the impact of team teaching, open classrooms or inquiry based learning?

Whatever the case, as History teachers we need to try to make time for fun, we must “fit it in” one way or another. There are so many students that simply won’t engage with a topic without that creative outlet. So what if Year 8 only spend 10 minutes learning about Viking longships and an additional 50 minutes building and designing one with cardboard, a straw and paper for a sail? Surely they are much more likely to remember the finer points of longship design after their painstaking cutting, colouring and glueing, than the 30 minutes you might spend looking at a presentation or textbook on Viking longships? Am I saying not to look at Viking longships, their design, navigation etc? No, but we need a balance of academia and creativity. Can you do this every lesson? No, it’s simply not possible and some students don’t enjoy it, but at least once every two weeks I would encourage you to incorporate some hands on fun. The enjoyment that they feel in Stage 4 History will have a huge and long-lasting affect on the number of students who select senior History in the years that follow.