Giraffes Can't Dance

A goal for us as teachers should be instilling a growth mindset in our students. Teaching them to problem solve, think critically and persevere are lifelong skills. There are some wonderful resources for teaching this to our students, including Becky Berg’s wonderful series, as well as Class Dojo’s Big Ideas videos. I love the story Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae to teach about the power of yet. Check out this idea of making a “yet” collage using the free app PicCollage Kids.
As a whole class, read the story and then brainstorm ideas of what they can do, and then things that they can't do ... YET. With this in mind, have a conversation with the kids to talk about goal setting and how hard work and perseverance can lead accomplishment of these goals. I love this chart example from the Brown Bag Teacher.

After brainstorming together, have students use this graphic organizer from the Brown Bag Teacher or something similar to write their own personal "can" and "can't YET" statements.

Using PicCollage Kids, have students use the text tools to type "I can" and "I can't YET" statements. They love customizing the color and look of the text in PicCollage Kids. Next, have them use the web search tool to search for images to match their text.

Students can label their images using the text tool, and/or save and upload to Seesaw where they can use the microphone tool to tell about their collage.