TeachKind Rescue Stories: Waheed and Tracy the Camels Fall in Love
Stories of people helping animals are all over the internet, and sharing them with your students is an excellent way to encourage kindness both in and out of the classroom. Because most children naturally feel compassion for animals, sharing rescue stories is a great way to engage and motivate different types of learners and encourage them to take action to help end animal abuse.
Each TeachKind Rescue Stories reading comprehension worksheet tells a different animal’s tale of transformation and features key vocabulary words and questions in order to encourage literal, inferential, and evaluative thinking. These worksheets were used in a study that found that students who read passages about having compassion for animals performed significantly better on Common Core–aligned assessments, demonstrating that instructional time need not be sacrificed in order to instill empathy in young people!
This rescue story is about Waheed and Tracy, two camels who were rescued from the entertainment industry by Animal Rahat, an organization that aims to help some of the most neglected animals in the world—the bullocks, donkeys, and other working animals of India.
Use other TeachKind resources to create an entire lesson around Waheed and Tracy’s experience of being rescued. You can use this worksheet to address the following Common Core English language arts standards:
GRADE 6
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.1
Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
GRADE 7
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.1
Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
GRADE 8
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.1
Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Be sure to watch Waheed and Tracy’s heartwarming rescue video to bring their love story to life.
These reading comprehension passages are geared toward students in grades 6 through 8 and are great for English-language learners, too.
Download February’s Rescue Story Reading Comprehension Worksheet!
Download this lesson in digital format here!
(Note to teachers: The digital format does not include the answer sheet. To view the answer sheet for grading purposes, please download the PDF version.)
Please share these resources with other teachers to inspire them to incorporate compassion for animals into their curricula!
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