The Vikings: Complete Upper KS2 History Unit

Eight complete lessons that teach children to think like historians, not just learn facts about the past.

Every lesson follows the same six-stage framework: Time Travellers, Big Question, Evidence Detectives, Discover, Prove It! and History Check. Every lesson is built on real primary sources: a carved picture stone, Alcuin’s letter of 793, a buried longship, a trader’s weight, a silver penny of Alfred, a Thor’s hammer amulet, a runestone.

Each lesson works two sources. The class investigates one together on the slides, in three steps: what can you see, what does it tell us, what can it not tell us. Pupils then take the same three steps on their own in the Journal, on a second source. Three of those sources are Viking voices, carved in stone by the Vikings themselves.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

8 PowerPoint lessons, with PDF copies for phones and tablets
69-page pupil Journal, one booklet for the whole unit
Knowledge Organiser
End-of-unit assessment, supported version and mark schemes
Teacher answer sheet for the Journal
Unit Planner with a one-page plan for every lesson
Evidence Detective Question Bank
Historian Competency Tracker
The Little Historians Framework
The Historian’s Workshop: four optional making tasks with resource sheets

LESSONS

1. Who were the Vikings? Why did they leave Scandinavia?
2. The raid on Lindisfarne. Why did it shock Britain?
3. Longships and long journeys. How did Viking ships change what was possible?
4. Raiders or traders? Were the Vikings only raiders?
5. Alfred and the fight for England. Did Alfred save England?
6. Living under the Danelaw. What changed when the Vikings stopped raiding and stayed?
7. Beliefs, burials and missing voices. What did the Vikings believe, and whose story is missing?
8. How should we remember the Vikings? Raiders, traders or settlers?

Designed to be taught in sequence. Each source builds the skills of the last.

Try Lesson 1 free: search “Little Historians Vikings free lesson”.

Explore the Past. Inspire the Future.