Students participate in Vikings for Schools Project

The Centre for the Study for the Viking Age (CSVA), a research centre within the School of English, held some exciting in-house workshops for primary school children. The Vikings for Schools outreach project was held for Primary schools in the local area and children came to the University to learn about Viking culture, literature and life. They also watched current Vikings Studies students re-enact a Viking battle!

As part of the project, some of our students volunteered to engage with and help the children in various workshops that were held, from dressing up as Viking warriors to helping create longships and understanding trading.

Sam Roach and Ellen Fisher, who both attended and volunteered in the project gave us a little insight into their day as student volunteers. Here's what Sam and Ellen made of their experience:

Sam Roach
Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies MA

Vikings for Schools is a unique project, giving students the opportunity to connect with children from the Nottingham area, and teach them not only about Vikings but the opportunities of university. Whilst the subject matter, coupled with the chance to show off your sword skills, means that most of the children will be fairly engaged from the get go, the most rewarding moments are those when you garner the interest and excitement of students who are either too shy or academically uninspired, witnessing their confidence and interest visibly grow.

Vikings for Schools have weekly workshops in local primary schools, teaching kids from disadvantaged backgrounds everything from battle tactics to Three Men's Morris over the course of four hour-long sessions. We have also just completed two half-day sessions, hosting over fifty children from multiple local schools, teaching in groups about four areas of Viking study, from place-names to burials, capped off with a display from two members of the university's Living History society.

The project provides a great chance to test out teaching, but developing skills to connect with people very different to your self is invaluable in any profession. Vikings for Schools gives you the opportunity to make a genuine difference for children, whilst boosting your employability and CV, and worst case scenario you walk away with an interesting story about the kid who said Thor likes his beer 'because that's just how Australians are.'

Ellen Fisher
Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies MA

As an aspiring teacher, being part of the Vikings for Schools programme has been such a rewarding and invaluable experience. Each week we delivered a workshop on a different aspect of Viking life such as the homestead, runes and literature, longships and trading, and Viking warriors.

Our aim was to get the children as actively involved in their learning as possible, so we tried to incorporate as many varied activities as possible. For example, they wrote messages to each other in runes, made their own Viking longships and designed their own shields. They also had the opportunity to handle artifacts and the candleholders, for example, always provided a great guessing game, where we encouraged the children to use their existing knowledge to guess the item’s function.

The children always enjoyed it when we turned up in costume but they loved being able to try on costumes themselves and handle the weapons. They loved being Vikings themselves, so reenacting a shield-wall was always popular and got them communicating and working well as a team.

We introduced Viking stickers as rewards plus a ‘Viking of the Week’ incentive to encourage good behaviour and hard work, which was extremely successful and had a positive effect on not only the way the children interacted with us, but also with their classmates. Their willingness to learn was fantastic and was demonstrated by the insightful questions they asked, giving us the opportunity to encourage and help them think about possible answers by considering real evidence.

What was most rewarding was being able to instill some of my personal enthusiasm for the subject and see the children becoming inspired by what they were learning. Witnessing firsthand the positive effect the Vikings for Schools project has had on the children’s experience of education has made my involvement a completely worthwhile and invaluable experience.