TeachKind Rescue Stories: ‘Saving Samson the Beagle’

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 Samson, a beagle who was imprisoned inside Envigo’s massive breeding factory in Cumberland, Virginia, which previously supplied dogs to the National Institutes of Health for experimentation. Samson knew only concrete, steel, and the cries of thousands of other beagles bred to be shipped to laboratories around the world before PETA rescued him.

You can use other TeachKind resources to create an entire lesson around this story, and this worksheet is ideal for addressing the following Common Core English language arts standards:

GRADE 3
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.1
Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.

GRADE 4
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.1
Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

GRADE 5
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.5.1
Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

Be sure to watch Samson’s rescue video to see his amazing transformation:

The graphic organizers included with Samson’s rescue story reading comprehension worksheets below can be used to support your students’ understanding of identifying the main idea and supporting details of the text as well as the author’s purpose for writing it.

Download Samson’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.)

Want more Rescue Stories reading comprehension worksheets? Download our bundle for grades 3–5 on TPT, and follow our store for more empathy-building academic content.

Check out TeachKind’s “Samson the Beagle” kahoot!