TeachKind Rescue Stories: Hotel Ends Fish-Rental Program

Stories of humans helping other 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 fish who were once used in a rental program at Kimpton Hotels. After talks with PETA, the hotel chain agreed to find new homes for more than 200 fish and end the program.

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:

Grades 9-10

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.1
  Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Grades 11-12

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.1
  Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Download This Rescue Story!

Stories of people helping animals are powerful tools for teaching empathy and critical reading skills in high school classrooms. This TeachKind rescue story describes how a hotel agreed to end its fish-rental program and find new homes for the fish after discussions with PETA, offering a timely real-world example that connects civic responsibility, animal welfare, and persuasive advocacy.

The downloadable worksheet that accompanies the passage guides students through vocabulary, literal comprehension, and higher-order questions that align with Common Core standards for grades 9–12, making it easy to integrate into a single class period or a short unit. Use the story as the anchor text for activities such as evidence-based writing tasks, structured debates about animal use in hospitality, or interdisciplinary projects that combine science (fish care and behavior) with social studies (corporate responsibility and advocacy).

For teachers who want to extend learning, pair the passage with research tasks where students investigate current animal-welfare policies in tourism and draft polite persuasive letters to institutions still offering live-animal rentals. Sharing rescue stories like this one not only develops literacy and critical thinking but also motivates students to consider ethical choices and community action, turning reading time into a springboard for civic-minded learning and compassionate decision-making.

Please share these resources to inspire other teachers to incorporate compassion for animals into their curricula.