Welcome to Red Kites 2026-2026 with Miss Maycock

Here you will discover more about our learning in Red Kites. 

In Red Kites we have been focusing on our topic of South Africa! We have been using this to guide our reading, writing and our geography lessons.  

In English we have been reading Our Story Starts in Africa by Patrice Lawrence, and using her wonderful story to inspire our own narratives. Red Kites have written some amazing stories about the Warrior Queen using conjunctions, amazing adjectives and speech marks. We then started to focus on the main character of the story and have been writing diary entries with a focus on using commas and writing in the past tense. We also wrote a lovely poem that we performed at Harvest this year. Our guided reading book is an illustrated version of Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom which we have been thinking deeply about when answering our questions.  

In Geography we have been thinking about South Africa and have been learning about weather, animals, homes, traditions, national resources and landscape and comparing them to the UK. The children have enjoyed getting to make Rondavel houses and designing their own African bead work. This is learning we are continuing into the next half term.  

In science we have been learning all about plants and even had a go at growing some of our own. We spent time thinking about all the things plants need to grow and how water travels through the plant to reach the leaves. We used some blue food colouring and celery to help us figure this out.  

Our focus in RE has been Hinduism, with a focus on Diwali. The pupils loved getting to make their own lanterns, which we have used to decorate the classroom.