Suggested Grade/Age Range: Grades 1-2 (ages 6-8)

Activity Objective: The goal of this activity is to help children develop awareness about the resources (both within the self and through getting help from others) that are available for overcoming challenges. The underlying message is the importance of never giving up and to keep trying, which is an important component to developing healthy self-esteem.

Learning Goals
Big Messages to Kids

Link to Ontario Curriculum

Materials Required:

Role play cards

Prep Time: 5-10 minutes

• Print out role play cards
• Cut up role play cards (optional)

Task Time: 30-40 minutes

Task time depends on whether or not children will be acting out the scenarios presented

Activity Description:

Opening Discussion

1.       Tell the class that you will be talking about how overcoming challenges can boost one’s self-esteem

Review over the concept of self-esteem if this activity does not follow the Read Aloud and Discussion

2.       Ask the class why they think overcoming challenges is important for boosting self-esteem. Allow a few individuals to answer and write down the answers on the board or on chart paper to add more details to later

3.       Ask the class why helping others can boost self-esteem

Give a simple example as needed if children find this idea abstract (e.g., cheering for a teammate during a soccer game; giving a friend a hug when they are feeling sad, etc.)

Activity:

4.       Tell the class that you will be reading a few scenarios about characters going through a challenge. You will need the class’ help to identify the challenge and help the character come up with the solution

5.       Read out the first scenario. You may want to read it twice to ensure students have all the details. After reading it, ask the following questions:

• What happened in the scenario?
• What challenge is (character name) experiencing?
• How can they overcome this challenge? How will this boost their self-esteem?
• How can the other characters (say their specific names) help them overcome this challenge? How will this boost their self-esteems?

6.       Write down responses from each discussion on separate chart paper. This can be used for acting out the scenarios and for summarizing the discussion at the end

7.       If there is time, choose a few children to act out the scenario and have the whole class help come up with the dialogue for each character. For time purposes, you may want to choose 1 or 2 scenarios to do this with

 Wrap-up Discussion

8.       Conclude the discussion by reviewing over all the important points discussed. Make sure to emphasize the messages of persevering through challenges and not giving up. Also touch on how helping or encouraging others can boost our self-esteem as well

Activity Extensions:

As a reflection, children can write or draw pictures about a challenge they are working on or have overcome and the strategies they used to do so. They can present these during a later time to the class if they would like

Additional Comments:

This activity is important as it helps to dispel the misconception that self-esteem is only about the things we are good at. Rather, self-esteem is boosted when we persevere and are resilient in the face of challenges and work on overcoming them. Self-esteem can be boosted through our own actions, through receiving support from others, and also through helping others who are in need

Additional Resources:

You may want to refer to the Read Aloud ‘Never Give Up: A Story About Self-esteem’ to review over the ideas of boosting self-esteem by overcoming challenges, receiving help from others, and helping others

You may also choose to review the Self-esteem Literature Review before implementing this activity. It can be found here.