Challenging situations in life escape no one, especially the family! Resiliency & The Family will provide you with ready to teach lesson plans that define many aspects of resiliency, explore associated risk and protective factors along with related characteristics in a variety of engaging ways.

Set

• Place students into small groups of 2-4 and provide them with a prompt response form. You can have each student fill out a form or give one form per group, and have students rotate with writing responses. Remind students that they will be sharing their answers with the class so they need to be prepared to discuss and/or defend their answers.
• Show students the Bell Ringer prompts, give them a few minutes to discuss and write their responses down. After the third prompt, come back together as a class to share and discuss their responses.
• Afterwards, go over the MESSES notes and then have students go back to their small groups and brainstorm examples of life messes as they fill in their Alpha-Box template. The Alpha-Box Template is a TPT freebie.
• Now that students have a good idea of life messes, introduce the demonstration activity using rubber bands and toothpicks. If you are worried about the behavior of students with rubber bands and/or toothpicks in their hands, then YOU demonstrate the actions for the them. Discss the outcomes and make connections to life messes.
• Now introduce students to the term RESILIENCE and have them take notes on the definition and factors (protective and risk) that determine if a person/family will bouce back or break under the stress of the life mess. To demonstrate the risk and protective factors, have students participate in the demonstration with scenarios #1 and #2. It’s important to stress to students that just because someone has risk factors does not mean they’ll “give in” to the problem(s); it just increases their likelihood.
• Explain to students the differences between BALANCE and CHAOS before assigning the Newspaper Story. After students have annotated the newspaper story for risk and protective factores, have them discuss their results in small groups and/or as a class.

Materials

• iPads or Laptops
• Projector & Screen
• Rubberbands (affiliate link)
• Toothpicks (affiliate link)
• Post-It-Notes (affiliate link)
• DVD: The Secret: Dare to Dream (affiliate link)

Activities

• Now that students have a better understanding of what resilience is, it’s time to go over the traits and domains via the Traits & Domains Matching Activity. Note: You will need to cut apart the cards and shuffle prior to implementing this activity.
• If desired, you can also reinforce these notes and concepts by having students participate in the P-I-N Activity. There are two versions available; hands-on or digital. Choose the one that works best for you.
• It’s now time to apply their notes and assign a case study. The case study in this case is an Amazon movie titled: The Secret: Dare to Dream which can be rented or purchased as a DVD. As students view this movie, they are to complete the guide sheet, referencing their notes if needed along the way. I always liked to discuss the prompts of what occurred in the previous day’s viewing to recap before starting up the next day. However, you can also wait to discuss until the end or collect for a grade.
• To culminate the topic of resilience, there are three projects that can be offered to students or you can pick one and have the whole class do the same project. One project is an ABC Poem, the second a Quilt Block and the third a Visual.

Attachments

• Bell Ringer Prompts
• Student Response Form
• Alph-Boxes (TPT Freebie)
• Demonstration & Definition & Factors
• News Article
• Matching Activity
• P-I-N Activity & Digital Version
• Case Study Guide Sheet
• ABC Poem
• Quilt Block
• Visual