The Very Cranky Bear: Visualising 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 visualise what is happening in the story based on their prior knowledge and text clues.

Either during or after reading the text, have students pause and reflect upon a descriptive part of the story. Encourage them to close their eyes and imagine what is happening. Use prompts to guide their thinking, such as:

• What is the character doing?
• What do they look like?
• Where are they?
• What is near them?
• What time of day is it?

We recommend not showing students the book’s illustrations until they have completed their visualising task. Afterwards, have them compare what they visualised with the illustrations in the text to build discussion and awareness of how authors and illustrators bring stories to life.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• ✅ Practise visualising key moments in a story
• ✅ Use prior knowledge and text clues to build mental images
• ✅ Strengthen comprehension through visualisation
• ✅ Practise drawing and writing to communicate visual understanding
• ✅ Build oral language and discussion skills through comparing visualisations with text illustrations

What’s Included:

• Drawing a picture of what they visualise
• Drawing a picture of what they visualise and describing it (24mm lines)
• Drawing a picture of what they visualise and describing it (18mm lines)

Materials Needed:

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

How to Use:

1. Read The Very Cranky Bear with your class.
2. During or after reading, pause and select a descriptive part of the story to focus on.
3. Guide students through visualisation using the provided prompts.
4. Students complete the worksheet by drawing and/or writing about what they visualised.
5. Afterwards, compare their visualisations with the book’s illustrations to spark rich discussion.

Ideas for Classroom Use:

• 💡 Use as an independent comprehension task during or after reading The Very Cranky Bear.
• 💡 Include in a literacy rotation for visualisation practise.
• 💡 Use for assessment evidence of comprehension and visualisation 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 drawing and writing.
• 💛 Model the visualisation process by thinking aloud as you read a descriptive part of the story.
• 💛 Encourage students to compare and discuss their visualisations with classmates to promote oral language development.
• 💛 Display student visualisations in the classroom to celebrate their creative thinking and comprehension.

The Very Cranky Bear: Visualising is a flexible and engaging way to build comprehension, creativity, and critical thinking. It’s the perfect companion 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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