Resiliency Activities and Group Curriculum

This resiliency group counseling curriculum is awesome for helping students deal with whatever life throws their way. It works as a changing families group for students experiencing life changes such as: foster care, divorce or separation, re-marriage or blended families, incarceration, deployment, deportation, moving, death, etc. It’s also great for students impacted by sticky life circumstances or kiddos just needing some additional MTSS tier 2 social-emotional support.

This group is 10 sessions long and complete with surveys, notes, and anything else you need to make the group a success. Each skills-based session is based on research about resiliency development in children to create a tier 2 counseling group curriculum that works in lots of different situations. Want to use these activities for individual counseling? You can absolutely do that, too!

Resource Includes:

• Session 1: Welcome and Introductions (expectations, survey, check-ins, and “would you rather”)
• Session 2: Feelings (play a game to practice identifying and expressing feelings, then create a picture to represent)
• Session 3: Stressors (identify the presence and intensity of different life stressors at home and school)
• Session 4: Coping Skills (create an interactive page while identifying and practicing coping strategies)
• Session 5: Locus of Control (identify what is in vs. out of your control)
• Session 6: Hope and Goals (discuss hopes, dreams, goals, and then create “My Hope Book”)
• Session 7: Social Support (identify social supports and the different ways they provide support)
• Session 8: Positive Thinking (identify helpful vs. unhelpful thoughts in different scenarios, create positive affirmation keyring)
• Session 9: Problem Solving (board game practicing I-messages, apologies, and being a responsible problem solver)
• Session 10: Closing (create a “squash book” as a memory of the sessions)
• Additional Components: parent/caregiver notes in English and Spanish, suggested book companion list, homework, teacher pre/post survey, student pre/post survey

Some students need support and skills to build personal resiliency when going through tough situations or tricky developmental transitions more than they need (or are able) to process specific changes or circumstances. That said, there are some opportunities embedded in sessions for processing and reflecting on life changes if that is appropriate for your group.

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