Explore Real-Life Examples of Resilience

Jill keeps falling off the balance beam during gymnastics. She is frustrated, but she keeps working on her routine.

The above is a real-life example of resilience in action. Resilient people do not become overwhelmed by setbacks (such as falling off the balance beam). Rather, resilient people choose to dig deep, bounce back and keep trying. This is a skill that takes some time to master, so it is important to start teaching these concepts as early as possible!

This digital social-emotional learning activity has been designed by our teacher team to help your students identify whether or not a child has responded in a resilient manner after experiencing a challenge or setback. Students will read the two reactions, then decide which is a resilient reaction and which is not. They must then drag and drop the tick icon over the box where the child is displaying resilience and the cross icon over the box where the child is not displaying resilience. There are 16 scenarios contained in the resource.

Use the dropdown menu to select the Google Slides version of this resource. Be sure to operate the Edit mode – the drag-and-drop features will not work in Slideshow mode.

This resource provides your students with an opportunity to identify examples of resilience in real-world, age-appropriate situations. It can be used as a whole-class review activity or can be assigned to students in Google Classroom for them to complete individually.

Discuss and Analyze Examples of Resilience

While designed to be used as an online game, this resource provides a great opportunity to explore and analyze the characteristics of resilient people in greater detail with your class.

Look for opportunities to extend your students’ learning by discussing the situations on each slide. Discussion questions could include:

• Why is this a challenging situation for the child involved?
• How might the child be feeling?
• What would you do in this situation? Why?
• In what other ways could this child show resilience?
• What would resilience look like and sound like in this situation?

Students could even list some things that the resilient child and nonresilient child might say in each example.

Download to Explore Examples of Resilience

Use the Download button to access the editable Google Slides version of this resource. Please be aware that you will be prompted to make a copy of the Google Slides file and save it to your personal drive before accessing it.

This resource was created by Lisamarie Del Valle, a teacher in Florida and a Teach Starter collaborator.

Click for More Great Resilience Activities for Kids

Teach Starter has more great resources to save you time when teaching the valuable life skill of resilience to your class. Click below for some more curriculum-aligned, teacher-created activities!

teaching resource

What Is Perseverance? Teaching Slides

Teach your students perseverance strategies with this comprehensive slideshow perfect for your social-emotional learning lessons.

teaching resource

Becoming Resilient Mini-Book

Use this printable resilience book to teach your students what resilience means and how it can be used as a tool in their everyday lives.

teaching resource

Resilience Writing Prompts

Use this set of resilience writing prompts to help your students reflect upon times they have observed resilience in themselves and others.