Learning

Schools and Teachers

Bring your class 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 schools a range of FREE curriculum-linked sessions for KS1-4 (see below). Each session is delivered by experienced staff 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 needs of learners. Extra resources include teacher's notes, a video and classroom activity ideas for before and after your visit.

You can keep up to date on exciting learning developments with our termly Teacher Newletter. To join the mailing list, click here and tick the box for School's Information, specifying the name of your school in the text box below.

To download the Summer Term Newsletter, click on the icon.  This is a PDF document.

Taught Sessions for Schools

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.

NC links:

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

English En1 – 2a, 2b, 2c, 2e, 4a, 4b

Art & Design – 2b, 2c

Citizenship – 1a, 1b, 2i

Victorian Foundlings

KS2

With imaginative use of archive material, art, costumes, role play, writing and group discussion, this session will encourage your students to discover what life was really like for a Foundling in Victorian times. Your group will also look at the difficult decisions faced by the children’s parents and by the Hospital’s governors, who had to choose which child could stay. On request, this session can be adapted to incorporate creative writing and art work.

NC links:

History – 3, 4a, 11a

English En1 – 1b, 2a, 2b, 4a, 4c, 4d

Citizenship – 2e, 4b

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.

NC links:

History 2a, 2b, 4a

English En1 – 4a, 8c, 9a, 10a, 11a

Citizenship – 2c, 3a

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 help.