Onsite programs

Our museums, historic houses and gardens are at the heart of every school interaction. We offer immersive, curriculum-linked excursions for Stages 1 to 6.

Stage 1

Stage 1 programs transport students back in time to develop understandings of the past and present through direct experience. As they do lessons and drills in an 1880s schoolhouse or visit the sprawling harbourside estate where 8-year-old Laura Wentworth lived with her large family, wash clothes, go shopping or plant seeds, students compare their own lives with the lives of children and their families in the past. All Stage 1 programs have a strong emphasis on experiential learning using historical artefacts and technologies, costumed interpretation and imaginative recreation.

Stage 2

In Stages 2 & 3, the focus shifts to explaining cause and effect, developing empathetic understanding and linking individual people, places and events to broader social and historical contexts. Students begin to develop skills in using and evaluating sources and understanding issues of subjectivity, perspective and bias as they investigate stories of the First Fleet and settlement in Australia, convicts, the impact colonisation on Indigenous people and their cultures, the changing environment, the gold rushes and bushrangers.

Stage 3

In Stages 2 & 3, the focus shifts to explaining cause and effect, developing empathetic understanding and linking individual people, places and events to broader social and historical contexts. Students begin to develop skills in using and evaluating sources and understanding issues of subjectivity, perspective and bias as they investigate stories of the First Fleet and settlement in Australia, convicts, the impact colonisation on Indigenous people and their cultures, the changing environment, the gold rushes and bushrangers.

Stage 4

Programs for Years 7–10 focus on exploring concepts of cause and effect, significance and contestability and on reading historical and other sources in increasingly complex ways – whether a standing building or archaeological remains, artefact or document, image or word. As students pursue a historical inquiry, they develop their skills in analysing and evaluating primary and secondary sources, and in processing and synthesising information. As they explore past lives and events, they also explore the nature of history and the role of museums and heritage sites as places that interpret and reconstruct the past.

Stage 5

Programs for Years 7–10 focus on exploring concepts of cause and effect, significance and contestability and on reading historical and other sources in increasingly complex ways – whether a standing building or archaeological remains, artefact or document, image or word. As students pursue a historical inquiry, they develop their skills in analysing and evaluating primary and secondary sources, and in processing and synthesising information. As they explore past lives and events, they also explore the nature of history and the role of museums and heritage sites as places that interpret and reconstruct the past.

Stage 6

Stage 6 programs are as much about the future as the past. As a bridge between school and tertiary study, our programs aim to challenge, provoke, inspire and encourage, to help students prepare for their final exams and their future learning. Equally, our Stage 6 programs are a bridge between theory and practice. Key priorities are to provide opportunities for students to apply and practise high-level skills and understandings in authentic contexts and to meet a range of practising professionals, such as researchers, historians, curators, archaeologists and authors.