Teaching Resilience to Students

This blog is inspired by the classroom activity held in the First-year B.Com General English class on December 13, 2024. One of the main highlights of the activity was how the students used their mobile phones to learn. 

The first-year students in their second semester at the University of Madras have Resilience as the overall- theme in the English syllabus. 

Students are given a wordlist of 32 words after introducing the word Resilience by writing the word on the board. 

Class - I B.Com A.  

Time - One Hour 

The following words related to Resilience 💪 were used for  the activity: 

Fortitude

Perseverance

Durability

Tenacity

Stamina

Hardiness

Grit

Robustness

Adaptability

Bounce-back

Flexibility

Recovery

Elasticity

Rebound

Renewal

Revitalisation

Courage

Determination

Optimism

Self-reliance

Inner strength

Hope

Willpower

Equanimity

Persistence

Triumph

Resourcefulness

Ingenuity

Survivability

Endurance

Overcoming

During the class activity, several observations highlighted the effectiveness of independent learning strategies. Activities included finding the meanings of words and creating example sentences, allowing students to engage with the material more deeply. The group-based, technology-enabled setup facilitated student interaction, enabling a natural assessment of their social skills and collaboration. The activity allowed the students to interact with one another, with noticeable differences in how they completed their tasks. The students had two primary functions: first, to copy words into their notebooks, and second, to find their meanings and write example sentences for each word. Translating the words and their meanings into Tamil proved beneficial for struggling learners. Contextual learning emerged as crucial for vocabulary acquisition. Additionally, group work fostered confidence, encouraging students to answer questions collaboratively. The activity could be further enriched by having students share their findings in a Class WhatsApp group and organising a spelling bee contest or an activity that involved matching the words with their meanings.