Cloud Tea Monkeys Planning | Year 3 and 4 English Unit | 15 Lessons

Cloud Tea Monkeys planning for Year 3 and 4: a complete 15-lesson English unit with PowerPoints, teacher plans and worksheets, all built around the book.

High in the mountains, Tashi’s mother is too ill to pick tea, and the overseer laughs at the little girl who tries to take her place. Then the monkeys step in. This book-led unit takes your class through Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham’s story, illustrated by Juan Wijngaard. It opens with a caffeine-free tea-tasting lesson, uses drama and readers’ theatre along the way, and ends with every pupil writing the missing chapter the book never tells.

What’s inside
• 15 fully resourced lessons, each about an hour, with a learning objective and success criteria
• 15 PowerPoint presentations with Pause and Ponder questions, modelled writing and hinge questions
• 15 detailed three-page teacher plans (PDF) with a 60-minute timeline and step-by-step guidance
• Worksheets for every lesson: a core and a supported version, in colour and ink-saving black and white
• Exemplars, assessment guidance and adaptive teaching notes for support, EAL, SEND and stretch
• A Printables and Working Wall pack, with tasting station cards, role cards, a word mat, vocabulary cards and 14 grammar posters
• A one-page unit map with National Curriculum links

Skills taught
• Reading: inference with evidence, word meanings in context, summarising and reading non-fiction
• Grammar: expanded noun phrases, fronted adverbials, conjunctions, direct speech, possessive apostrophes, the present perfect and Standard English
• Writing: sensory description, character profile, free verse poetry, explanation, playscript, instructions, diary and a fully drafted, edited and published narrative chapter

Highlights
• A Cupful of Words: a safe tea-tasting hook before pupils write
• The Royal Slurp: the teacher acts out the Royal Tea Taster before pupils write instructions
• The Climb: pupils write the chapter the book leaves out
• The Cloud Tea Café: a celebration where pupils share their published work

Who it is for
Lower KS2 classes in Year 3, Year 4 or mixed Year 3/4, following the National Curriculum for English.

Try it first: Lesson 1, A Cupful of Words, is free. Cloud Tea Monkeys Free Lesson 1 | Year 3 and 4 English

Save with the bundle: Cloud Tea Monkeys and Rhythm of the Rain | Y3/4 Bundle

You will need the book: Cloud Tea Monkeys by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham.
We strongly recommend having a copy in your classroom.