Highbury Infant School and Nursery

Welcome to Green Class

Autumn 2 

This term we’re looking forward to an exciting and fun filled new topic! This term’s new topic will be Space. In History, we will be learning about the Great Space Race and the first moon landing.

We will be learning about the solar system and learning the order and names of the planets.

We used oil pastels to draw the order of the planets. 

In Jigsaw, we are going to be learning ways we can keep ourselves healthy, happy and relaxed.

In English we will be learning to write a recount of the first moon landing using the information, we have gathered using books, iPads and other secondary sources. We will be making an information page for a class book on a planet of our choice. Both of these require the children to understand the difference when writing for fiction and non-fiction. We will focus on tense, adverbs of time to sequence and noun phrases that add detail.

In Design and Technology, we will be designing and making our own planet.

Space day

We had lots of fun on Space day! We made slime, decorated a biscuit to look like a galaxy, decorated a bag, made a star constellation and lots of other really fun activities! 

 Spring 1

 In Green class this half term, we’re looking forward to an exciting new topic on Castles. Within our castle topic, we will be covering a great deal of skills in English, History, Geography, Design and Technology and Art. In History we will be learning who built the first castles in the UK and why, who lived in medieval castles and how the use of castles has changed over time.

We made our own castles in DT. 

We will be teaching the children to design and make mechanisms for their castles as part of our Design and Technology curriculum. Please bring in a named shoebox if you haven’t done so already.

In Geography, we will be finding out why castles were built on hills, which land features make castles easier to defend, naming and locating the capital cities of the UK and their castles and designing and using simple maps and keys.

In Art, we will be using lines to create pictures in the style of the Bayeux tapestry and to create a picture in the style of the Buck Brothers engravings.

In English, we’ll be reading alternative versions of the traditional tale Rapunzel and writing our own versions of this. The children are being encouraged to select interesting adjectives to describe characters and settings and sequence their writing using adverbs of time. You can support your child at home by looking for this language when reading with your child.

In Maths we will be learning to tell the time to the nearest quarter of an hour and then to the nearest 5 minutes, to measure weight, length and capacity and know the different units of measure, to learn fractions of a shape and number and to add and subtract a two digit number using different methods.

In Jigsaw, we are going to be choosing a realistic goal and thinking about how we can achieve it and to be resilient in order to reach their goals.

Spring 2

In Green class this half term, we are looking forward to an exciting new topic on London. Within our London topic, we will be covering a great deal of skills in English, History, Geography and Art. In History, we will be learning about the Great Fire of London, why it happened, why Samuel Pepys is famous and what changes came about as a result of the fire.

In Art, we will be sketching different buildings in London paying particular attention to St Paul’s Cathedral and the Shard.

In Geography, we will be looking at different landmarks in London and comparing these to other landmarks in different continents. We will be learning the capital cities of the UK and the continents of the world and plotting these on maps.

In Computing, Mr Westmore will be using the Purple Mash program to teach coding on a Wednesday. We will be learning what an algorithm is, to design algorithms and code them, use command buttons and to know how to debug a programme.

In English, we will be learning about the features of non-fiction books and learning to use glossaries, contents and index pages. We will also be writing our own information books on the Great Fire of London. We will be looking at Samuel Pepys diary and making our own diary entries.

As part of our Jigsaw Curriculum our next jigsaw piece is called celebrating differences. This will cover gender diversity, assumptions and stereotypes about gender and celebrating difference.

Summer 1

Our topic for this half term is Water. In History we will be learning about Christopher Colombus and in Geography we will be looking at and creating our own maps. As part of Art we will be creating different seascapes using acrylic, water colour and ink. In Science we have started to investigate water through lots of Scientific investigations.

Watercolour seascapes

As part of our poetry work we will be designing our own calligrams. This is where the writing is made to look like the word. The children will be drawing these and using different programs on the computer to create them. For non-Fiction, we will be writing explanation texts of a basic water cycle. For fiction writing we will be describing under water mythical creatures, inventing our own creatures and writing stories about them.

In Maths, we will be learning to count forwards and backwards in steps of 2, 5 and 10, recall one more and one less and 10 more and 10 less than a given number and know odd and even numbers. We will learn to partition (split) numbers in different ways to support with addition and subtraction. We will recall multiplication facts for the 2, 5 and 10 multiplication tables and practise making coin values. We will also be doing lots of practical Maths, to support our topic such as capacity and data handling.

Summer 2

In English, we will be looking at different types of texts, including explanations and creation stories. These will be linked closely with our topics.