Search

The Lion Inside Activities and Lesson Plans for 2024

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Lion Inside will love this post. It’s a great resource that includes teaching ideas, resource recommendations, information about the book, and more.

With themes of growth mindset and confidence, this The Lion Inside picture book by Rachel Bright is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. You and your students will love it too!

Engage Your Students with The Lion Inside Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

  1. Read a summary of The Lion Inside.
  2. Check out the teaching ideas for reading comprehension strategies, grammar topics and social emotional learning skills that can be taught using this children’s book.
  3. Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with The Lion Inside reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.

THE LION INSIDE SUMMARY

The story The Lion Inside by Rachel Bright takes place in the jungle on an old flat rock. Mouse is small and meek and lives in a tiny house at the bottom of the rock. Hardly anyone notices him and he was often forgotten about. Lion lives at the top of the rock. He is very loud and makes sure everyone knows how important he is. 

One day Mouse decides that he is tired of being ignored and forgotten and decides that if he had a roar people would notice him and make friends. He realizes that Lion is the only one that can teach him how to roar, and that makes him very nervous. He decides to have confidence and go talk to Lion anyways so that he can make the first steps towards changing his life. 

When Mouse gets to the top of the mountain to talk to Lion, Lions shrieks and lunges away from Mouse. Lion is terrified of him! Mouse told him that they could be friends and they learned from each other that you don’t have to be loud to be noticed, you just need to find your true voice. Everyone has a little bit of lion and a little bit of mouse inside of them.

THE LION INSIDE LESSON PLAN IDEAS

Each of our 400+ Starts With a Story book companions come with a teacher’s guide to make lesson planning quick and easy, printable worksheets and digital resources that cover ALL of the standards-based reading comprehension skills.

When it comes to writing lesson plans and finding activities for The Lion Inside, we’ve already done all of the heavy lifting for you.

We found this book was especially good at teaching the topics listed below.

READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

The text-based The Lion Inside reading comprehension questions focus on:

  • analyzing character
  • comparing and contrasting
  • summarize / retell
  • author’s purpose

LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS

We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:

  • confidence
  • growth mindset

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

  • adjectives 
  • quotation marks 
  • antonyms

THE LION INSIDE ACTIVITIES

You’ll receive all of the following resources aligned to the story:

  • comprehension questions
  • 30 writing prompts with themed paper
  • vocabulary activities
  • word study print & go activities
  • ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
  • social emotional learning discussion topics
  • graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies
The Lion Inside book companion
elementary students listening to an interactive read aloud

YOU HAVE 2 OPTIONS! WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK COMPANION?

The Lion Inside book cover and sequencing worksheet

BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for The Lion Inside?

  • Lexile® Measure: AD600L
  • Guided Reading Level: L
  • DRA Level: 20 – 24
  • Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.3

Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?

The book was written by Rachel Bright. It was illustrated by Jim Field.

What genre is The Lion Inside?

It is a Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, and Fables book. You may want to check out our genre activities or read our blog post, How to Teach Genre to Elementary Students.

How many pages are in the book?

The story is 32 pages long.

Share it:
Email
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter

Get an Entire Packet of Book Companion Activities for FREE!

The Recess Queen book cover
Try this free Starts With a Story book companion based on Alexis O'Neill's picture book, The Recess Queen!