For Teachers & Families

Giraffe Materials Bring Forth Kids' Natural Caring and Courage

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Giraffe Service Learning Program Honored by UNESCO

Decades ago, the Giraffe Project helped create the Best Practices for service learning. More recently, our Service Learning Guide has been included in materials honored by UNESCO for best practices in their online course. There's more information (in Spanish) at http://www.7saberes.org/

What you need to know about Giraffe teaching materials—

In classrooms all across the United States and in English-speaking schools abroad, Giraffe K-12 programs help students build lives as courageous and compassionate citizens, while teaching academic and life skills. In launching its K-12 programs, beginning in 1991, the Project was a pioneer in creating the concept and Best Practices of what came to be called "service learning." You'll find an entire section on service learning, including examples and Best Practices, here. The same resource in Spanish is here.

We also describe Giraffe K-12 programs as "civic engagement," to emphasis their role in helping kids become courageous and compassionate citizens. In addition, Voices of Hope, a key component of our range of programs, is used as a literacy training tool all over the world, especially in teaching English as a second language. Read more about all our programs here.

Those Giraffe teaching materials—first, the free downloads —

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That free lesson in Spanish

La Lección Gratuita de La Jirafa

Aquí hay un ejercicio que funciona para todos los niveles de las escuelas, aunque es mejor para el segundo grado y los grados más altos que el Kindergarten o el primer grado. Las respuestas serán diferentes según la edad, pero el proceso siempre funciona.

La lección durará por lo menos 90 minutos en dos sesiones.

1. Pregúntales a los estudiantes ¿quienes son sus héroes? Escríbelos en la...

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And we have things you can buy ~

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The Voices of Hope Anthology of Giraffe Hero Stories

HEROES AND LITERACY

We've heard from many quarters that one of the things kids need most now is hope. We looked at our Giraffe Heroes Project files, bulging with stories of "Giraffe Heroes"— people from an array of ages, locations and backgrounds who are plunging into every imaginable problem and getting positive results. Their lives are models for positive action and enormous sources of hope.

We've put forty of these stories...

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The Voices of Hope Service Learning Guide

The Voices Hope Service Learning Guide is a helpful tool for people from middle school kids to adults.( It is now being translated into Spanish.) It contains a concise, easy-to-follow, seven-step process for designing and completing a successful service project: Choose the Problem—Research the Problem—Decide on a Project—Create a Vision—Make a Plan—Take Action—Reflect, Celebrate and Begin Again, The Guide is now being translated into...

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The Two-Fer: Heroes, Literacy and Service-Learning

Voices of Hope is a unique two-part curriculum that includes an anthology of heroes' stories that inspire kids, and a service-learning guide that shows kids how to be heroic themselves by getting engaged in solving civic problems, creating and carrying out projects that benefit their communities. And it's all set up to be used as part of standard curricula. Since every school has to teach reading, and...

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The Giraffe Heroes Kit

THE GIRAFFE HEROES KIT gives you all you need to guide 8-to-14-year-olds through well-tested steps for ~

  • learning about real heroes,
  • finding real heroes in their own world and
  • becoming heroes themselves as they create and carry out a community service project.

The contents and activities in this Kit are a distillation of the nationally recognized K-12 Giraffe Heroes Program created for classrooms,...

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The program for older teens

Stick Your Neck Out — A Street-Smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond, and its Teaching Guide, are a superb civic engagement training tool for upper level high school kids.

You can buy it here.

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Here's our Teachers' Magazine—education-related stuff you'll want to read~

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Why is My Teenager So Angry?

by Umair Haque

If Sandy Hook didn’t lead to change, why should Parkland? Blogger Umair Haque makes a strong case that teen discontent, welling up from much more than school shootings, may spark the changes that nothing else has.. I don’t see things as bleak as Haque does. But his essay...

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Teaching by storytelling

A time-tested aspect of any successful education program is teaching by storytelling.

People have known for millennia that stories stick in the mind, even when the listener might brush off any principles embedded in those stories if they were presented as rules and admonitions. The love...

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If your school needs backup information here are Evaluations, Correlations & Field Reports