TeachKind Rescue Stories: Pickles the Rabbit

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 Pickles, a rabbit whose previous guardian kept him in a laundry basket at night. Use Pickles’ story to discuss with students the importance of always adopting—never buying—animal companions and of providing them with the proper care they need.

Use other TeachKind resources to create an entire lesson around this story. You can use this worksheet to address the following Common Core English language arts standards.

Kindergarten

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.K.1: With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

Grade 1

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1.1: Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

Grade 2

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.1: Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.