The Very Cranky Bear: Questioning is a purposeful activity designed to accompany a whole class reading of the picture book The Very Cranky Bear by Nick Bland. These no-prep comprehension worksheets will allow you to check your students’ ability to pose meaningful questions based on their understanding of the text.

After reading the text, students will pose questions they still have about the characters, settings, and events. These questions can be general or directed specifically towards the main character. This encourages deeper thinking about the text and helps students build questioning and inference skills.

The Very Cranky Bear: Questioning offers multiple worksheet options to suit a range of learning needs. Students can ask questions and use text clues and prior knowledge to predict possible answers, or simply focus on generating thoughtful questions about the story.

This task is perfect for independent work, small group activities, scribing, assessment evidence, or your relief folder. It promotes comprehension, critical thinking, and oral and written expression.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• ✅ Pose meaningful questions about a text
• ✅ Use text clues and prior knowledge to infer answers
• ✅ Strengthen comprehension through questioning
• ✅ Build oral and written language skills
• ✅ Promote flexible and critical thinking about texts

What’s Included:

• Asking the main character a question and predicting their answer using text clues and prior knowledge
• Posing a series of questions scaffolded by the prompts: who, where, why, what, and why
• Posing a series of questions with no prompts (open-ended)
• Posing a series of questions and using text clues and prior knowledge to answer them based on what the character might say

Materials Needed:

• Printed The Very Cranky Bear: Questioning worksheets
• Pencils, crayons, markers

How to Use:

1. Read The Very Cranky Bear with your class.
2. Discuss how good readers ask questions to deepen understanding.
3. Choose the worksheet option that best suits your students.
4. Students complete the worksheet by writing and/or drawing their questions and, where applicable, predicting answers.
5. Encourage students to share their questions and reasoning in small groups or as a whole class discussion.

Ideas for Classroom Use:

• 💡 Use as an independent comprehension task after reading The Very Cranky Bear.
• 💡 Include in a literacy rotation for targeted comprehension practise.
• 💡 Use for assessment evidence of questioning and inference skills.
• 💡 Add to a relief folder as a no-prep literacy activity linked to a familiar text.

Top Teacher Tips:

• 💛 Enlarge worksheets to A3 for Early Years and Foundation students to provide more space for writing and drawing.
• 💛 Model examples of thoughtful questions before students begin the activity.
• 💛 Encourage students to use a variety of question openers to promote flexible thinking.
• 💛 Use student-generated questions to spark rich class discussions and deeper engagement with the text.

The Very Cranky Bear: Questioning is a flexible and engaging way to build comprehension and critical thinking skills. It’s the perfect addition to your literacy unit on this much-loved text!

Check out more amazing resources related to The Very Cranky Bear in our The Very Cranky Bear PACKAGE.

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