Is there a better message to explore with your pupils than, ‘dance to your own music’? With Travelling Tales: Giraffes Can’t Dance, you can plan a series of cross-curricular lessons centred around a quality text that provides pupils a healthy message about self-confidence and breaking down stereotypes.

Gerald is a giraffe who loves to dance. But upon approaching the dance floor at the Jungle Dance, the other animals laugh at the very thought of a Giraffe dancing. Fortunately, Gerald’s confidence is bolstered by a friendly cricket who tells him to ‘dance to your own music’.

The Travelling Tales series are a one-stop shop for all your storytelling resource needs, and this one is no exception. You can give your voice a rest and let someone else read the story to your pupils with the included audio book CD. A plush giraffe and a printed story mat can also be used by you and your pupils to re-tell the story in a memorable way. The range of cross-curricular resources in this Travelling Tales story sack can be used to help pupils make connections between what they learn and read as well as encourage less enthused readers.

• Have all the resources and inspiration needed to plan effective storytelling lessons using Giraffes Can’t Dance as the focus.

• Help pupils make connections in their learning using the cross-curricular activities and ideas included in this bank of resources.

• Inspire and excite you pupils about reading and encourage them to explore themes of self-confidence.

What’s in the Travelling Tales sack?

1 x copy of Giraffes Can’t Dance with audio book CD

1 x plush giraffe

1 x non-fiction book

1 x printed story mat

1 x hand drum and beater

1 x animal board game

1 x Teacher Guide

Contents may vary from description.

Reasons to Love:

• Quality texts from well known authors, great for sharing with children; the patterned language promotes choral reading and retelling, naturally encouraging audience participation!

• Each bag provides a window into a new world where the children can learn new ideas and information through engaging and exciting stories

• Good quality materials support the texts, allowing children to create their own play with the characters, further developing vocabulary and language

• Each bag contains a related non-fiction text, developing the idea of the story with further information

• The games link to the text and provide the opportunity to work collaboratively and take turns, while extending and developing the story

Learning Outcomes:

EYFS

Communication and Language and Understanding

• After listening to stories, children can express views about events or characters in the story and answer questions about why things happened.

Expressive arts and design

• This involves supporting children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. It involves providing children with opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities including role-play.

Being imaginative:

• Children use what they have learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes

• They represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through … role-play and stories

Letters and Sounds - Phase 1: Enjoying and sharing books

• Experience shows that children benefit hugely by exposure to books from an early age. Right from the start, lots of opportunities should be provided for children to engage with books that fire their imagination and interest. They should be encouraged to choose and peruse books freely as well as sharing them when read by an adult. Enjoying and sharing books leads to children seeing them as a source of pleasure and interest and motivates them to value reading.

Spoken language

• The National Curriculum for English reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. Spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing. The quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak are vital for developing their vocabulary and grammar and their understanding for reading and writing. Pupils should develop a capacity to explain their understanding of books and other reading, and to prepare their ideas before they write.

• Pupils should be able to adopt, create and sustain a range of roles, responding appropriately to others in role. They should have opportunities to improvise, devise and script drama for one another and a range of audiences, as well as to rehearse, refine, share and respond thoughtfully to drama and theatre performances.

Reading

• Good comprehension draws from linguistic knowledge (in particular of vocabulary and grammar) and on knowledge of the world. Comprehension skills develop through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with the teacher, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction. All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum.

• Reading widely and often increases pupils’ vocabulary because they encounter words they would rarely hear or use in everyday speech. Reading also feeds pupils’ imagination and opens up a treasure-house of wonder and joy for curious young minds.