Resiliency

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

When you got home from practice this afternoon you found out that your little brother trashed your room. He even broke your favorite toy! What is the best way to handle this?

We can all have a bad day once in a while and they can be difficult to handle.

There are good ways to cope with unhappy events and there are bad ways. It’s important to know that when unhappy events happen in our lives, we can learn and grow from each bad experience.

In this lesson, you will be learning about resiliency and coping skills.

What does resilience mean? Imagine you have each end of a piece of elastic in your hands. Pull your hands apart and the elastic stretches. Let go of one end and the elastic bounces back to its original size. For people, resilience means that after you go through a difficult time or event, you are able to bounce back again and be yourself.

What are coping skills? Coping skills are positive behaviors you do, or abilities you have, to deal with a difficult situation.

We are able to be resilient by developing resiliency skills. Please review the Resiliency and Coping Skills document in the Downloadable Resources section of the right-hand sidebar.

Have you ever had a really bad day? What happened that day? How did it feel? Is there anything you could have done to avoid the bad day? What did you do to feel better? Please watch this read aloud video of the book, Alexander and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst, from Read Aloud Childrens Books and Fun Stuff (below). Preview the questions below the video so you can catch the answers as you watch:

We all have days from which we wish we could just run away, and that is what happens to Alexander.

One bad thing after another occurs and he just wants to move to another country. He figures it may be better somewhere else, but he learns no matter where you are, problems happen and so do bad days. You just have to keep your head up and keep going.

Consider your answers to the following questions:

Write a letter to Alexander sharing some advice as to what he could do to turn his bad day into a much better day.