Learning

Schools

Bring your students to the Foundling Museum to uncover the moving true stories of the children left in the care of the Foundling Hospital by their impoverished parents during the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

We offer a range of curriculum-linked sessions for Foundation, Key Stages 1 to 4, GCSE, A Level and AS Level (see details below). Each session is delivered in our Clore Education Centre and the Museum’s galleries, and takes differing learning styles into account. The emphasis is on interaction and fun, while supporting the National Curriculum and the individual needs of learners.

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Taught Sessions for Schools

SEN sessions

All levels

Our curriculum-linked activities for SEN students open up the museum’s unique collections and the story of the Foundling Hospital in a safe, friendly environment.

Our sessions encourage your students’ communication and cognitive skills, and help develop their auditory and visual memory. The programme is totally flexible. Tell us what works for your group and we’ll tailor-make an exciting session just for them!

Activities include:

• Object handling (and smell boxes!)

• Interactive storytelling

• Dressing up                      

• Drama/role play       

• Drawing

The Education Centre is booked exclusively for your group for the duration of your visit, for use as a quiet area or for refreshment breaks.

NEW! Symbol-supported (Widgit) museum trail. Click here to download.

Thomas Coram:

The Man who Saved Children
Foundation Stage/KS1

The Foundling Hospital’s founder, Thomas Coram, is the perfect case study for finding out about "a famous person from a long time ago". Coram campaigned for seventeen years to open his hospital, then dedicated his life to saving the lives of London’s desperate children. His legacy lives on in the Foundling Museum’s collections and stories.

This lively session will encourage your class to find out about Thomas Coram and the lives of some of the foundling children using art, artefacts, archive-based resources, dressing up, role play and much more! Teachers’ notes, classroom activity ideas, a children’s guidebook and a video are available to support this fully resourced study unit.

National Curriculum links:

History - 1b, 2a, 2b, 6b, 6c

English En1 – 2a, 2b, 2c, 2e, 4a, 4b

Art & Design – 2b, 2c

Citizenship – 1a, 1b, 2i

Finding Me:
Citizenship & Identity
KS1, 2 and 3

Students use their creative skills to express thoughts

and emotions, and their personal sense of ‘self’.

As well as a lively history session looking at the

experiences of children who once lived in the

Foundling Hospital , students take part in creative

group activities in the Museum’s galleries.

Book any or all of the following modules:

A. Finding Words - creative writing (stories, letters, poems) inspired by Foundling children’s lives and artefacts on display.

B. Finding Ourselves – students’ create self portraits

full of personal symbolism, inspired by and created in

the presence of real 18th century portraits.

C. Finding Tokens - Desperate mothers often left their

babies at the Hospital with a small personal item.

Students look at the meaning of ‘tokens’ on display.

The class can also go on a token hunt in the park

outside the Museum.

National Curriculum links:

Citizenship - 01, 05, 07, 12; 7a, 9a, 10gen

PSHE

History - 7, 11, 22

English - En1, En3

Science - 2b

Art & Design - 1a, 1b, 2b, 4c, 5a, 6c, 9gen, 10gen

Victorian Foundlings

KS2

Against the background of the stunning Museum Galleries and our dedicated Education Centre, students use objects, drama, costume and archive material to experience life as:

• A Victorian foundling growing up in the Hospital

• A parent struggling to do the best for their child under the difficult circumstances of Victorian London

• A Governor of the Foundling Hospital, making difficult decisions about which children they should take in

Activities include:

• Role play

• Object investigation and handling

• Dressing up

• Speaking and Listening

• Group discussion

• Decision making

National Curriculum links:

History – 2, 3, 4a, 11a

English - En1: 1b, 2a, 2b, 4a, 4c

Citizenship - 2e, 4b

Science - 1a, 2a

PSHE

Drama session

KS2

A fabulous cross-curricular session combining history with drama in partnership with UCL Bloomsbury Theatre.

Part 1

The day starts at the Foundling Museum with a lively interactive session using museum objects, discussion and role play to bring the story of the Foundling Hospital to life. Students discover why children in 18th- and 19th-century London needed help, how the Hospital’s Governors chose which babies to take in and what daily life was like for foundlings.

Part 2

After lunch, the class walks to UCL Bloomsbury Theatre’s studio and becomes the cast in a play set in the Foundling Hospital long ago. This part lasts 2 hours and can be held back at your school or on a different day if you prefer.

National Curriculum links:

English – En1

History – 2, 11

Citizenship – 01, 02, 07

PSHE

The Real Coram Boy

KS3 & KS4

What was daily life really like for children growing up without their families at the Foundling Hospital? What social and economic conditions in eighteenth-, nineteenth and early twentieth-century England led to parents leaving their children to be brought up there? What happened to the Foundlings when they grew up and had to make their own way in the world?

This session uses original archive material, discussion, role play and gallery exploration to answer these questions. Your class will also have an exciting opportunity to interview a former pupil of the Foundling Hospital*. As well as being perfect for students studying Jamila Gavin’s novel Coram Boy, the session would also benefit any class as an extension of its history and citizenship studies.

*Wherever possible, we will arrange a face-to-face interview. When this is not possible we will substitute a genuine oral history recording.

National Curriculum links:

History 2a, 2b, 4a

English En1 – 4a, 8c, 9a, 10a, 11a

Citizenship – 2c, 3a

“The Master of us all”: The Life and Music of Handel

KS4, GCSE & A Level Music

One of history’s greatest composers, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) was a Governor and benefactor of the Foundling Hospital. Annual performances of Handel’s oratorio ‘Messiah’ provided the charity with vital income and tickets were in great demand by 18th-century London’s ‘in crowd’.

Students gain unique access to priceless historical artefacts. In addition to the score and parts of ‘Messiah’ bequeathed to the Hospital, the Museum houses the Gerald Coke Handel Collection, an internationally important collection of material relating to Handel and his contemporaries. This fantastic resource includes manuscripts, printed books and music, libretti, paintings and engravings, memorabilia, art works and ephemera (including Handel’s own tuning fork!).

This session will be tailored to support your group’s course studies and is lead by a Coke Collection archivist.

Contact us to discuss your requirements.

Can’t find what you need?

If our formal session programme doesn’t meet your group’s needs, we can tailor lectures, talks and sessions to suit you! Please contact the Learning Team for further information.