Anglo-Saxon Tools Teacher Notes

What tools did the Anglo-Saxons use?

Teaching objectiveTo help children understand the importance of farming tools to the Anglo-Saxons, and introduce how they used them in their daily work.

National CurriculumHistory programmes of study:2a. Pupils should be taught about characteristic features of the periods and societies studied, including the ideas, beliefs, attitudes and experiences of men, women and children in the past.

DescriptionAn investigation, involving examining artefacts in detail to work out how they were used, followed by a role play.

ResourcesLarge image of Hurbuck HoardActivity sheet and pencil for recordingStiff card and tape/strong gluePaints – grey and brown

What to doIntroduction: Look at the large picture of the hoard. What do the children think these objects are? Why were they buried and who by? Discuss the importance of farming tools at that time. The hoard is made of iron and shows how important a blacksmith’s skills were. Most of the tools would have been mounted on wooden handles.

Development: Children look closely at the tools, then cut them out, together with the descriptions and labels from the activity sheet, and stick them together onto a blank A4 sheet.Notes:- The 4 scythe blades are straight, as opposed to modern curved blades.- There are 3 woodworker’s axe heads, used for chopping and shaping wood. These are in a row in the centre and to the right, underneath the scythe blades.- The Anglo-Saxon pickaxe was used for breaking up hard ground, as it still is today. This is near the bottom of the picture with two spikes and a hole in the middle for the handle.- An adze is a woodworking tool with a flat blade set at right-angles to the handle. It is used for smoothing the surface of wood, and is on very left next to the axe heads, shaped a bit like a fishtail.- The borer used for boring holes in wood is at the very bottom.- The spoon bit is so called because it is shaped like a spoon, and attaches to a drill for making holes in wood.What two items are left over? Any ideas what these might be? The children can stick them onto the sheet and write their own descriptions next to them.

Round up and communication: Children make their own versions of these tools out of stiff card, using brown card to make the handles – discuss how these would have fitted on and where. They use role play to try the tools out, demonstrating to the rest of the class how their tool would have been used.

Differentiation: If you have Word, you can download the activity sheet to alter it for different abilities. To do this click on 'download'. When asked 'what do you want to do with this file?' select 'Save to disk', and choose where on your computer you want to save it. Then open Word and open the file on your computer. You can now amend it and save different versions. To add or delete rows in the table, right-click anywhere inside it, then select ‘insert rows’ or ‘delete cells’.

Extension: 1. Ask the children to look at the drawings (underneath main picture) of people

working in the fields. Can they identify: chopping trees, haymaking, threshing, harvesting (2 pictures), digging, sharpening a scythe. Which tools from the hoard can they see being used? Which other tools are being used and for what purpose? Can they draw pictures in a similar style using other tools from the hoard?

2.The farming year was of crucial important to all Anglo-Saxons. Look at the pictures and decide whether activities took place in the spring, summer, autumn or winter. Can the children think of other farming activities to fit into these categories? (eg sowing, slaughter of animals). Draw four boxes labelled with the seasons, and draw activities into them in the correct place.

3. Extend the role play: split the class into groups – each has a farming task eg harvesting, chopping trees etc. They have to act out the activity (using their model tools if they have them) while the others try and guess what it is and when in the year it was performed.