Helping young people identify the feelings experienced when facing and overcoming a challenge, such as adapting to big changes or new ways of learning and working, can be an important step to recognising the benefits of successfully tackling challenges in the workplace. The activities on this page support your teaching of these skills in a variety of ways, whether you’re looking for a short independent activity or a full length, curriculum-linked lesson plan:

Teaching resources:

• Self confidence: Lesson plan and presentation slides – full lesson plan for use with a group of students in the classroom
• Building confidence: Facebook live film – short film which can be used to start the lesson to provide an overview of the topic
• Meeting challenges with confidence: Interactive worksheet – interactive worksheet activity for independent learning whether remote or in class

Lesson plan 

(60 - 75 minutes)

This lesson is designed to help students understand how successfully solving a problem or meeting a challenge can increase their self confidence.

Lesson learning outcomes

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

• Identify challenges and describe their feelings when overcoming them
• Use helpful strategies for overcoming fears and challenges both about the past and present
• Apply positive thinking to real life situations, including in the workplace

How will this lesson help build students’ confidence tackling challenges?

Students will explore the emotions they feel when faced with challenges in their lives and how these feelings change once a solution is found, in order to recognise the positive impact this can have on building confidence. They will also discuss how the mindset they approach problems with can affect how successful their responses are. The activity explores facing challenges in a work setting and encourages students to share ideas for overcoming their fears.

How can positive thinking increase self-esteem?

By discussing how a ‘hero’ of theirs approaches situations, students will reflect on what they can do to respond to a challenge with a positive mindset, and in turn how this can build self-esteem. In small groups, they will consider past events in their lives and how experiences come with a mixture of positive and negative feelings, before sharing tips for approaching problems more confidently in the future.

Facebook live film

(10 minutes)

This Building confidence film has been adapted from a Facebook live session created in partnership with education charity The Talent Foundry. The film can be used at the start of this lesson before delving into the full lesson plan to help students understand the importance of confidence. It will give them some top tips to building their own self confidence helping them be better equipped to overcome the challenges they may face in the future, whether personal, at school or college, or in the workplace.

Interactive worksheet

(20 - 25 minutes)

Please note that students below the age of 14 cannot sign up for their own LifeSkills account. Any independent tasks must be printed or downloaded and provided digitally for them to complete as they are currently hosted on educator pages.

The Meeting challenges with confidence interactive worksheet introduces some of the themes from the full lesson plan and will help students understand how facing challenges can prepare them for their future. The worksheet can be printed or completed digitally, so can be used flexibly to strengthen your students’ self confidence. You might choose to assign it:

• As homework following the Self confidence lesson
• For independent study
• For remote learning

Looking for more ways to boost self confidence with LifeSkills?

Self confidence is something to reflect on and build on over time. If you want to find other opportunities to teach students methods for boosting self confidence, try the Building confidence and assertiveness lesson. Being resilient is an important part of maintaining self confidence, and our core transferable skill lesson and activities on Staying Positive (resilience) features tips on overcoming setbacks and developing a positive mindset. Refer to our Content guide to find out how LifeSkills resources can be used in PSHE, English lessons and much more.

Why not complement this lesson with more activities, including interactive worksheet activities and online lesson films, around the topic of wellbeing you can find on our   Wellbeing toolkit page?