Understanding Resilience

Overview

Unit Title: Building Resilient Identities
Lesson: 6 of 10
Time: 60 minutes
Year Level: Year 3
Subject: Health and Physical Education
Curriculum Area: Personal, Social and Community Health
Australian Curriculum Content Descriptions:

• ACPPS033: Describe strategies to make the classroom and playground healthy, safe and active spaces
• ACPPS035: Identify and practise emotional responses that account for own and others’ feelings

---

Learning Intentions

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Define resilience in their own words
• Identify three key behaviours or traits of resilient individuals
• Describe at least two simple strategies they can use to build their own resilience

---

Success Criteria

Students will:

✅ Participate in class discussions about resilience
✅ Complete a simple “Resilience Toolkit” activity
✅ Demonstrate understanding by acting out responses to challenges in a role-play scenario

---

Resources

• A3 paper per group (“Resilience Roleplay” wheels)
• “Resilience Toolkit” worksheets (1 per student)
• Coloured pencils or markers
• ‘Emotion Cards’ (prepared prior – 8 common emotions such as happy, sad, frustrated, excited, etc.)
• Class whiteboard and markers
• Soft toy or stress ball (to be passed around during circle time)

---

Lesson Breakdown

1. Welcome and Warm-up (10 mins)

• Activity: Emotion Circle
  Students sit in a circle. The teacher introduces the activity by reviewing feelings and emotions.
  “Today we’re going to talk about something really important – how we deal with hard times or tricky situations. That special skill is called ‘resilience’.”
  Pass the soft toy around – each student shares a time they felt a difficult feeling (e.g., frustrated, left out, scared) and one word to describe it, using prepared Emotion Cards as prompts if needed.

Teaching Tip: Keep it light and supportive – students don’t need to share personal stories, just a time they felt a strong emotion.

---

2. What is Resilience? (10 mins)

• Definition Discussion Write the word Resilience on the board in large letters.

  Ask:
  🧠 “What do you think resilience means?”
  👂 “Have you heard this word before?”
  🗣 “What do resilient people do when things get tough?”

• Teacher provides clear, age-appropriate definition:

  “Resilience is when we bounce back after something goes wrong – like a rubber band or a bouncing ball!”

• Use a soft ball to demonstrate: Drop it and watch it bounce.

  “Just like this bouncing ball, we can learn how to bounce back when we feel upset or when something doesn’t go our way!”

---

3. Characteristics of Resilient People (10 mins)

Teacher-led brainstorm on the whiteboard:
“What do resilient people do or say?”

Examples may include:

• Try again
• Stay calm
• Ask for help
• Keep going even when it’s hard
• Use kind words to themselves (e.g., “I can do it!”)

Illustrate with scenarios:

• “If someone loses their turn in a game, what could a resilient person do?”
• “If someone is feeling sad because they were left out, what might help them bounce back?”

Add these ideas to the board under the title: Resilient People…

---

4. Building Our Own Resilience Tools (15 mins)

Activity: “My Resilience Toolkit”

Each student receives a worksheet titled My Resilience Toolkit.

Sections might include:

• 🎧 One thing that helps me feel calm
• 📞 A person I can talk to
• 🧘 Something I can do to relax
• 💭 A positive thought I can say to myself
• 🕹 A fun activity to cheer me up

Encourage students to draw and write a word or two in each box.

Extension for advanced learners: Ask them to include a tricky situation and match it with the tool they’d use.

---

5. Roleplay: Resilience Wheel (10 mins)

Group Activity: In small groups of 4–5, students take turns using the “Resilience Wheel” – a spinner (or paper wheel) with different challenge scenarios such as:

• You forgot your homework
• Your friend didn’t play with you today
• It started raining at recess

Students spin the wheel and role-play how they might react in a resilient way. Peers give a thumbs up or suggest another strategy if needed.

---

6. Reflect and Close (5 mins)

Exit Activity: “Resilient or Not?”

Teacher reads a few short scenarios aloud, and students show thumbs up if the student in the story showed resilience, or thumbs sideways/down if not. Discuss briefly why.

Examples:

• “Jordan fell off the monkey bars and said, ‘I’ll never play again!’”
• “Emily lost her book but asked the teacher for help to find it.”

Wrap-Up Question: “What’s one tool from your toolkit you think you’ll use this week?”

---

Differentiation & Support

• Visual Learners: Use illustrations and real objects (ball bounce)
• EAL/D Students: Simplify vocabulary and use Emotion Cards with visuals
• Students Needing Extra Support: Work in pairs on worksheets or scaffold answers during group work
• Extension: Invite students to create their own resilience scenario and act it out

---

Assessment

Formative:

• Observation during group discussions and roleplay
• Completed “My Resilience Toolkit” worksheet
• Responses during Exit Activity

---

Teacher Reflection

• What strategies engaged students most in understanding resilience?
• Did students transfer personal experiences into the discussion and activities?
• How might I support students who find it difficult to open up about emotions?

---

Cross-Curriculum Connections

• English: Oral language – sharing ideas and roleplaying
• The Arts: Drama – improvisation, expression of personal stories

---

Opportunities for Home Connection

Encourage students to take their Resilience Toolkit home and show one tool to a family member. Parents can be invited to add to their child’s toolkit with a family resilience strategy or calming technique they use at home.

---

Vocabulary Focus

• Resilience: Bouncing back when things go wrong
• Strategy: A clever plan to solve a problem
• Challenge: Something that is hard to do
• Emotion: A feeling, like happy, sad or angry

---

This lesson brings emotional literacy and practical strategies together in a supportive and student-led way, empowering Year 3 learners to understand, develop, and use resilience in real-life contexts.