Life Success
For Students With Learning Disabilities:
A Teacher Guide

Perseverance: Elementary Grades

Introductory Activity 

As you introduce perseverance, add it to the chart entitled “Keys to Success.”  (You will be adding more attributes to the chart later.)  Have class define “perseverance” in their own words.  Post word cards, posters, and lists brainstormed and created through classroom activities.  Review at the beginning of each day or class period and infuse through the curriculum.  Reinforce and refer to each attribute using “teachable moments” throughout the school day.  Have students find examples of success attributes in current events, news stories, TV programs, peer experiences, and their own experiences, and create a bulletin board with the appropriate attribute as a label.

General Activities

• Share inspirational stories (e.g., tell, have students read, watch movies) of people who have persevered in the face of adversity.
• Have students share their own stories (e.g., tell, write, draw) about times when they have or have not persevered and the consequent outcomes.
• Have students keep journals focusing on experiences requiring perseverance.
• Have students self-monitor their behavior and attitude when playing games (e.g., physical, table-top) that require perseverance.

Extension Activities

Finding The Key
(Use the "Finding The Key" worksheet available in the Activities Worksheets section)

• Read stories and current events or view films of characters or people who have overcome obstacles/barriers (Tortoise & Hare, Thank you, Mr. Falker, Helen Keller, Stephen Hawkins, Martin Luther King Jr., Christopher Reeves, Lance Armstrong, etc.
• Post a large chart of a cut-out closed door with doorknob and keyhole.  The door represents the obstacles/barriers the characters/people faced.  List the obstacles on the front of the door.
• As a class, identify the characteristics that allowed these people to overcome their barriers and open the door.  Put the characteristics on key-shaped word cards with a hole punched on top.  These can be strung on a key chain and hung by the door.
• Put the word “persevere” on a large word card.  Talk about the definition.  For older students, explain the etymology (intent + severe = severe intent).
• Have students identify people in their lives or discuss situations when they have had to persevere.  Have them fill out their own door chart and identify the “keys”, that allowed them to overcome the closed door.

Don’t-Quit Alternatives

• Brainstorm alternatives to quitting.
• Add the following suggestions to the list if not mentioned:
• get help, information
• try another way to reach your goal
• get some encouragement, sympathy from a friend
• take a breather and try again later
• readjust your goal
• cheer yourself up by doing something you like
• get angry and use the anger to give you energy, move you to even more action
• make a mental picture of succeeding - make it very elaborate - bask in the warmth of success - daydream!!
• give yourself a pep talk

• give yourself credit for making it this far
• give yourself credit for the effort you’ve put in
• list the strengths you have that will help you to succeed
• give yourself credit for reaching past goals!

• Have children choose a strategy and make an 8½ by 11 poster of it. Pin them on a bulletin board entitled “Feel Like Quitting?”
• Offer a choice of making up success mottos such as “the difference between success and failure is getting up that one last time,” quitters never win and winners never quit,” “hang in there,” “nice try.”

Select Role Models

• Have students select five people they know who have shown perseverance and ask them to write/ discuss how they persevered and what drove them to persevere.

• Have students select examples of people who have not persevered and list the consequences of not persevering.

Next: Perseverance Activities for Secondary Grades