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Lesson 2 of 7
  • Year 2

Exploring and performing 'Elephant Beat' and 'Night Soup' by James Carter

I can perform a poem in front of an audience.

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Lesson 2 of 7
New
New
  • Year 2

Exploring and performing 'Elephant Beat' and 'Night Soup' by James Carter

I can perform a poem in front of an audience.

Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and

Copyrights help

Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. The poem ‘Elephant Beat’ tells a story about the adventure of riding an elephant.
  2. It has a structured rhythm, which gives it a marching feel.
  3. ‘Night Soup’ is a poem about creating an imaginary, magical ‘soup’ made from elements of the night.
  4. When performing a poem, we can vary our volume to create different effects.
  5. Using expression and gestures can make our performances fun and interesting for the audience to watch.

Keywords

  • Rhythm - the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that creates the beat or flow of the poem

  • Volume - the loudness or softness of your voice when speaking or reading a poem

  • Expression - reading with feelings and emotion to bring the poem to life

  • Gesture - a movement that helps express an idea or meaning

Common misconception

Pupils may find it hard to identify the rhythm of the poem.

The best way to model this is through clapping or marching out the rhythm and letting them hear the beat.


To help you plan your year 2 English lesson on: Exploring and performing 'Elephant Beat' and 'Night Soup' by James Carter, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

You may wish to spend a whole lesson exploring the poems and then another lesson performing them. Pupils would benefit from time to rehearse their performances. It can be beneficial to film pupils' performances and then watch them back, discussing how to improve.
Teacher tip

Equipment

You need access to a copy of the poems, 'Elephant Beat' and 'Night Soup', which are available in the additional materials for this lesson.

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2026), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

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