Building Resilience through System-Activity Methods in Primary English Education

Today, it is crucial to provide children not only with a wealth of knowledge but also to ensure their personal and cognitive development, equipping them with essential skills such as resilience—a necessary ability in the modern world.

The use of teaching materials, including visual aids, audio, video materials, and other tools in lessons, often falls short in achieving these educational goals. To address this challenge, I employ various approaches and methods in my teaching. One of them is the system-activity approach since it is this that contributes to the achievement of all goals at once when learning English. The system-activity approach allows taking into account the age-specific characteristics of primary school children. At this developmental stage, children are highly curious and explorative; so in my lessons I incorporate various game situations, songs, dialogues and a variety of interactive activities. Additionally, participation in competitions and extracurricular activities offers opportunities for students to apply their acquired knowledge, which allows them to be successful and even weak students to shine.

One of the most favorite games among children in my class is "Whispers."

Instructions:

• Organize children into 3-5 groups of at least six members. Show a flashcard with an image, word, or sentence, or say it to the first child in each group.
• This child whispers the word to the next child, continuing until it reaches the final child.
• The final child announces the word aloud.
• Optionally, the class can repeat the word/sentence in unison, translate it, or act it out.

You can modify this game in different ways, using specific word or grammar structures. I love this short game because children can move while simultaneously practicing speaking, listening or even reading and they interact with each other.

I believe that it is a technology of the activity-based teaching method that is capable of not only developing cognitive needs and forming the necessary skills in students, but also cultivating their resilience.