Confidence Under Pressure

Objectives:
● Students will demonstrate comprehension of a short story and articulate its plot and theme.
● Students will reflect on the traits necessary to feel confidence under pressure, and connect it to challenges they’ve faced in their own lives.
● Students will write a brief personal narrative that draws parallels to the theme developed in the short story.

Standards: This lesson meets Common Core Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening. (See end of lesson for a complete list.)

Introduction: Ask the students to volunteer responses to the following questions. Then, write responses on the board.
● What are the qualities you need to succeed in a competition?
● (Possible responses: talent, hard work, practice, confidence/belief in self, encouragement)
● Among the responses, which do students think is the most important (students may disagree; that is fine—encourage them to defend their point of view.)

Tell students they are going to read a story about a national speech competition. The author is facing a lot of pressure and self-doubt. Will he be successful?

Reading: Have students take turns reading the story aloud in pairs, small groups or as a class. Pause periodically to check for understanding. Next, have students answer the following questions in their groups, then discuss their responses as a class.
● In five sentences or less, describe the plot of this story.
● Why was the author anxious about the competition?
● What happened in the first round to change his confidence level?
● To what does the author attribute their loss in the final round? How does he feel about it?
● What do you think is the theme of this story? Why?
● The author begins the story with a quote: “It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” What do you think the quote means?

Writing: Write about a time that you were involved in a competition or challenge that made you doubt your own abilities. Describe the situation and why you felt a lack of confidence. Then, describe the steps you took to improve your performance. Or, if you don’t feel like you were successful in handling the challenge, what might you have done to increase your confidence and handle the situation more successfully? Whether you think you were successful or not, what did you learn from that experience that you can apply to future challenges? How?