Subject: SEL (Social-Emotional Learning)
Lesson Length: 1 - 2 hours
Topic: Growth Mindset, Perseverance
Brief Description: Students will demonstrate how they overcame an obstacle.
Know Before You Start: Students should have a challenging situation in mind that they are willing to share with the class.
Hook:
- Ask students:
- “What strategies have you used to problem-solve when you are stuck?”
- “What is a growth mindset?”
- “What is resilience?”
Activity:
- Have students independently reflect on a challenge that they recently overcame and the steps they took to overcome it.
- Have students create a comic that tells their personal success story.
- Set up a gallery walk and have students examine the comics from each of their classmates.
- While looking at the comics, students should write down strategies that their peers carried out to move past the challenging situation.
Closure:
- Record the strategies shared by students on an anchor chart or sharable online document while students share their findings with the class.
- Empathize that it is easy to give up when you’re faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
- Discuss the benefits and the growth mindset that can occur when people overcome a tough task, e.g., self-discovery, improving problem-solving skills, etc.
Differentiation:
- Allow students to use the speech-to-text feature.
- Allow students to work in pairs or groups as needed.
- Allow students to use the voiceover to read their comics aloud.
- Provide a list of common challenging situations for students in grades 9-12 that students can select from if they do not have one to use for the activity.
Resources:
- Comic to print or display: Comic.
- Graphic Organizers:
- Videos:
- Overcoming Obstacles by Steven Claunch
- Perseverance- A 2D Animated Short Film by Transformation Studios
- Book: It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
Suggested Content Packs:
High School
Wilderness Survival
I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World
Dystopian World
Suggested Story Starters:
