Healthy Minds
Build the minds that carry them through life. Skills for the mind. For every year that matters.
A full, evidence-based mental health and resilience curriculum spanning all five years of secondary school: 11 carefully sequenced modules, 70 structured lessons and one coherent developmental journey.
Built on cognitive behavioural theory, positive psychology, neuroscience, and adolescent development research, Healthy Minds takes a spiral approach: introducing core concepts in Year 7 and returning to them with increasing depth as students mature. Topics range from how the brain works and emotional regulation, to media literacy, healthy relationships, physical resilience and navigating exams and life beyond school.
What makes it distinctive is its evidence base an RCT tracking 10,000 students across five years and its commitment to practical, transferable learning. By the time students complete the curriculum, they've built a real inner framework for understanding their own mind, supporting others and sustaining their wellbeing under pressure.
For schools, it offers something genuinely rare: a structured, progressive approach that treats young people's mental health not as an add-on, but as a core part of their development.
Modules and lessons
Explore the curriculum
Browse modules in order, then open any lesson for its summary, learning outcomes, and supporting resources.
Resilience Skills Foundation
Everyone faces setbacks. What separates those who bounce on is a set of learnable skills. This module introduces students to the science of resilience: how the brain works, why we think the way we do, and how to identify and challenge the unhelpful thought patterns that hold us back. It's the foundation everything else is built on. Built on sound theory from positive psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy, efficacy and explanatory style. Informed originally from the evidence of the Penn Resilience Programme and reinforced through the Education Endowment Foundations's Healthy Minds Randomised Controlled Trial.
Resilience & Harnessing Positive Emotions Secondary
This is the opening lesson of the Healthy Minds Foundation module. It introduces students to the concept of resilience, the skills that help us navigate the inevitable ups and downs of life.
Connecting the Brain, Emotions & Thoughts Secondary
Students explore the neuroscience behind why we react the way we do. The lesson introduces a simple three-part model of the brain (Primitive, Feeling, Thinking) and explains how emotions and thoughts are connected.
Introducing Gremlin Beliefs Secondary
Building on the ABC framework from Lesson 2, this lesson introduces the concept of Gremlin Beliefs — four types of common unhelpful thinking patterns that distort how we see situations and drive negative emotions and behaviours. Students learn to identify these gremlins in scenarios and practise replacing them with more accurate, flexible thinking.
Optimism & Evidence secondary
This lesson teaches students to challenge Gremlin Beliefs by seeking evidence and thinking flexibly. Using an optical illusion, opinion-line debates, and a story (Mia and Ava at the arcade), students discover the difference between optimistic and pessimistic thinking, and learn that our brains can tell inaccurate stories when they lack evidence.
WoBbLe: Taming the Catastrophising Gremlin Secondary
This lesson focuses specifically on the Catastrophising Gremlin Belief — the tendency to snowball a small problem into a catastrophic chain of disasters in our mind. Students are introduced to the WoBbLe skill (Worst case → Best case → Most Likely), a structured thinking technique to bring balance to runaway catastrophic thoughts.
Resilience Planning Secondary
This is the final lesson of the Foundation module — a consolidation and celebration lesson. Students revisit all five resilience skills taught across the module through a structured review quiz, then create their own individual Resilience Plan that captures what they have learnt and how they will apply it in their lives.
Intentional Stillness
Developed with the Harry Kane Foundation and Kate Kane, these Year 7 stillness lessons give students practical tools to manage an always-on world — at exactly the age their brains need it most. Grounded in neuroscience and expert practice, students explore three techniques: bodily techniques; breathing, muscle relaxation; social techniques being present in their connections with others, and distraction techniques using focused, cognitive attention to still an overwhelmed mind. Science-backed, immediately useful, and built for real life. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — a developmental, evidence-based programme built to grow with your students.
Introduction to Intentional Stillness
This is the introductory lesson of the Intentional Stillness module. It establishes what "intentional stillness" means — paying deliberate, purposeful attention to the present moment — and introduces the three types of intentional stillness practice: Bodily, Connection, and Cognitive.
Intentional Stillness & Anxiety
This lesson explores the link between intentional stillness and managing anxiety. Students learn about the brain's anxiety response (the amygdala), use the metaphor of a stress/anxiety bucket to understand what fills and empties their personal anxiety, and practise three forms of intentional stillness.
Intentional Stillness & Sleep
This lesson explores the specific link between intentional stillness and sleep quality. Students learn why sleep is especially important for teenagers, discuss recommended sleep hours and the consequences of sleep deprivation, and practise intentional stillness techniques designed to prepare the mind and body for rest.
Connecting to Others
The final lesson of the Intentional Stillness module explores the deep link between human connection and mental health. Students learn about the social brain (specifically the insula) and how our connections with others influence our feelings and behaviours.
Media Nav
Media Navigator — Helping Young People Thrive Online The world has changed. Our teaching needs to catch up. Young people have never known a world without social media — navigating algorithms, influencers and fake news daily, often without the tools to do it safely or confidently. Media Navigator gives them those tools. A six-lesson programme for Year 7 that builds critical media literacy alongside emotional resilience — so pupils don't just survive the online world, they understand it.Questions what they see, not just consume it Separates the curated online world from real life. Connects digital behaviour to wellbeing and real relationships. Fake news travels six times faster than the truth. Comparison culture is at an all-time high. Young people are making permanent decisions in temporary emotional states — online, every day. Media Navigator equips pupils to pause, think, and choose. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — evidence-based and built for real life.
Introduction to Media Literacy & Social Media
This is the first lesson of the Social Media Investigated: Media Navigator module — a media literacy programme for Year 7. The lesson establishes a Safe Learning Agreement, introduces the concept of media literacy (access, analyse, create), and gives students practical experience deconstructing an advertisement (Kia Exercising Hamsters) to identify text, subtext, and target audience.
Fantasy & Reality
This lesson explores how media blurs the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Students deconstruct a Lego advertisement for fantasy elements, analyse the McDonald's Big Mac Makeover video to understand how food advertising manipulates reality, examine the nature of reality television using The Biggest Loser as a case study, and begin exploring what it means to set boundaries online.
Advantages, Disadvantages & Boundary Setting
This lesson builds on the boundary-setting discussion from Lesson 2 and extends it into a structured exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of social media. Students collaborate to generate their own advantages/disadvantages list, discuss whether social media turns people into performers, and work in small groups on a Social Media Scenarios activity — arranging scenario cards from most positive to most negative and discussing what boundaries would keep people safe.
Benefits of Social Media
This lesson takes a deliberately positive starting point: research shows that beginning with benefits rather than drawbacks opens minds more creatively and leads to more lasting learning. Students explore how social media enhances communication, watch and analyse two videos ("I Forgot My Phone" and "Taking Control of the Trolls"), and work in small groups to create their own personal guidelines for using social media positively.
Creating Identity Maps
This lesson and the following one form a two-part project focused on students reflecting on the online identity they want for themselves. The aim is not to have students carve out their online identity now, but to go through a thoughtful process of considering it alongside their peers.
Presenting Identity Maps
This is the final lesson of the Media Navigator module and of the full Healthy Minds Year 7 programme. The classroom is transformed into a social media platform: students display their identity maps on the walls or tables, rotate around the room to view each other's maps and leave written comments (non-anonymously), then return to read comments on their own map.
Resilience Revisted
Resilience Revisited — Because Resilience Isn't a One-Off Lesson Skills learned once are skills forgotten. Skills revisited become habits for life. Year 8 is a pivotal moment — new pressures, shifting friendships, growing independence. Resilience Revisited meets young people exactly where they are, reinforcing the tools they first learned in Year 7 through fresh, relevant scenarios that make the skills stick. A six-lesson programme that deepens and transfers resilience skills into the real situations adolescents face — from setbacks and conflict to optimism, empathy and assertive communication. Research shows resilience skills need reinforcing over time and across different contexts. By Year 8, pupils don't just revisit the tools — they own them. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — a developmental, evidence-based programme built to grow with your students.
Revisit the Skills of Resilience
Recap of the five resilience skills (Harnessing Emotions, Noticing Gremlins, Reframing, Moving On, WoBbLe) with a focus on when and how to apply them in real-life situations.
Optimistic Thinking
Explores pessimistic thinking patterns and how to replace them with flexible, realistic alternatives using the ABC model and Optimistic Alternatives Worksheet.
WoBbLe Review
Reinforces the WoBbLe skill (Worst/Best/Most Likely case) to tame Catastrophising Gremlin Beliefs. Covers when WoBbLe is appropriate and introduces emergency response skills (999, recovery position).
Assertive Communication
Introduces the four communication styles and a four-step Assertive Communication Technique. Students practise in pairs using real-life activating event scenarios.
Moving On Skill
Introduces Confirmation Bias and how brains filter information to confirm existing beliefs. Students practise selecting the right resilience skill for different everyday situations.
Empathy and Resilience Planning
Final lesson focusing on empathy vs sympathy, resilience mind-mapping, and consolidating all five resilience skills. Students create personal resilience plans.
From School to Life
From School to Life — Helping Young People Build Their Future Today What young people believe is possible shapes the adults they become. UK children rank 69th out of 72 countries for life satisfaction. The choices, habits and self-belief formed during adolescence leave a long arm into adult outcomes — work, relationships, earning potential and health. From School to Life helps schools change that. This nine-lesson curriculum helps young people connect who they are today with who they want to become — and identify the everyday actions that can get them there. It's not enough to tell young people to aim high. These lessons give them the tools to picture it, plan it and take the small daily steps that make it real. Difficulty is normalised, aspiration is made tangible, and young people leave with a genuine sense of direction. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — evidence-based, developmentally sequenced, and built for real life. The gap between academic success and a person's perceived perception of what is possible led to the creation of the School to Jobs intervention led by Dr Daphne Oyserman who kindly allowed us to redesign it as From School to Life.
Being Part of a Group and My Adult Self
Opening lesson building class rapport through group tasks. Students select images representing the adult they want to be across four life domains: work, family, lifestyle, and community.
Positive and Negative Role Models
Students identify positive and negative role models across the four adult domains and explore how these influences shape future success. Introduces the Future Me worksheet.
Bucket List and Timelines
Students create personal wishlist bucket lists then begin personal future timelines, identifying forks in the road, obstacles, and roadblocks between present day and adult goals.
Timelines Continued
Students complete and share personal timelines in small groups. Discussion draws out themes around planning, getting information, and breaking future goals into manageable steps.
Actions
Distinguishes dreams from possible selves and introduces specific action-setting. Students write clear, time-bound actions for each adult life domain linked to their timeline goals.
Possible Selves
Students create poster boards visualising their next-year positive and negative possible selves, then select strategies and actions to reach positive outcomes and avoid negative ones.
Adult Possible Selves
Extends possible selves thinking to the long-term adult future. Students complete the adult side of their poster board, connecting present actions to adult aspirations.
Solving Everyday Problems
Introduces structured problem-solving for everyday school-related challenges. Students apply resilience skills to real problems, recognising that seeking help promptly is a strength.
Looking Forward
Final From School to Life lesson connecting present choices to future goals. Students reflect on how resilience skills, role models, timelines, and actions work together to support their futures.
Media Influences
Media Influences — From Understanding Media to Challenging It Media Navigator (in year 7) taught them to read the media now we teach them to question it — and change it. Media Influences builds directly on Media Navigator, taking pupils deeper into how media shapes the way we see ourselves, each other, and the world. In a climate of impossible beauty standards, addictive marketing and gender stereotypes reinforced daily by screens, this programme gives young people the critical tools to push back. An eight-lesson curriculum that examines the real-world impact of media on identity, body image, health choices and gender — and empowers pupils to become active, informed, and confident media citizens. Young people are bombarded with messages about who they should be, what they should look like, and what they should want. Media Influences gives them the skills to spot it, challenge it, and choose differently. The goal isn't passive awareness. It's active change. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — developmental, evidence-based, and built for real life.
Introduction to Media Influences
Introductory lesson revisiting media literacy and setting context for Media Influences. Covers advances in social media, text vs subtext, and prepares students for critical analysis of gender, body image, health, and decision-making.
Media Gender Constructions
Examines how media constructs gender stereotypes. Students deconstruct adverts to identify target marketing, gender bias, and the influence of legislation on media representation.
Media and Body Image
Explores how media promotes unrealistic body ideals. Deconstructs fashion and fitness advertising, addresses body shaming, and develops body-positive, health-focused responses.
Media, Health and Food Marketing
Compares food product marketing against actual nutritional value. Students examine food targeting strategies, barriers to accessing healthy food, and structural issues in public health.
Media, Health, and the Marketing of Addiction
Investigates gambling product marketing and the links between gaming mechanics and addiction. Features a team quiz and scenario-based group discussion on gambling awareness.
Media and Decision Making
Examines how media directly influences consumer and personal decision-making. Students analyse persuasion techniques, build a media log, and develop strategies for more conscious decision-making.
Creating Media
Students design and create their own counter-adverts challenging a deceptive or harmful media message. Covers counter advertising concepts, deconstruction examples, and practical campaign production.
Presenting Media: My Counter Advert
Final lesson where students present their counter-adverts to the class. Discussion reflects on the full Media Influences module and how critical media literacy applies beyond school.
Physical Resilience
Physical Resilience — Curated with Harry Kane A healthy body and a healthy mind aren't separate things. They're the same thing. This unique curriculum brings Bounce Forward's resilience framework together with the real-world perspective of an elite athlete. Harry Kane's personal experiences feature throughout — making the link between physical habits and mental wellbeing immediate, credible and relevant. Five lessons explore how exercise, nutrition and sleep directly affect mood, concentration and resilience. The curriculum takes the skills pupils have been building and roots them in the physical — because what you eat, how you move, and how you sleep shapes how you think, feel and cope. Year 9 is high pressure. Exams loom, identities are forming, and mental health challenges are rising. Physical Resilience gives young people an honest, inspiring reason to take their wellbeing seriously — not just for performance, but for life. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — evidence-based, developmental, and built for real life.
Physical Resilience - Exercise and Mental Health
This opening lesson of the Physical Resilience module developed with the Harry Kane Foundation. The resource explores the direct link between physical exercise and mental health. Students revisit the resilience skills from Year 7 (positive emotion, ABC, Gremlin Beliefs) and apply them specifically to their beliefs about physical activity. The lesson uses Harry Kane as a relatable ambassador and challenges students to identify and reframe unhelpful thinking patterns about exercise.
Physical Resilience: Nutrition and Mental Health
This lesson explores the growing evidence base for the link between what we eat and our mental health. Students learn about the gut-brain axis, the role of different food groups, and the barriers that prevent young people from eating well. Using Harry Kane as a relatable case study, they examine how nutrition choices directly impact physical and mental performance, then create a collaborative Mental Strength Nutrition Charter.
Physical Resilience: Sleep and the Adolescent Brain
This lesson explores why sleep is essential for adolescent mental and physical health. Students learn about the science of sleep — including the circadian rhythm, melatonin, Non-REM and REM sleep stages — and hear from both Harry Kane and Dr John Coleman (clinical psychologist and adolescence expert) on why sleep matters. The lesson culminates in students reflecting honestly on their own sleep routines and beginning a sleep diary.
Physical Resilience: Facts and Common Beliefs About Sleep
Building directly on Lesson 3, this lesson goes deeper into the science of teen sleep, the real impact of sleep deprivation, and — crucially — the common unhelpful beliefs that prevent young people from prioritising sleep. Students watch a second Dr John Coleman video, generate a class list of sleep myths, then use the reframing technique (linking back to Gremlin Beliefs and flexible thinking from Year 7) to challenge and replace those beliefs with more accurate alternatives.
Physical Resilience: Sleep Routines
The final lesson of the Physical Resilience module moves from understanding sleep science to taking practical action. Students watch Dr John Coleman's third video on sleep routines and how to overcome the melatonin effect, build a class list of healthy sleep routines, and create their own personalised sleep diary. The session closes with a final word from Harry Kane and a signpost to the National Sleep Helpline.
Mental Illness
Mental Illness Investigated — Because Understanding Changes Everything One in four people will experience a mental health problem. Yet most young people still don't know what that means, what causes it, or what to do when it affects them or someone they care about. Mental Illness Investigated is a carefully designed curriculum that tackles mental health with honesty, accuracy and compassion. At a time when anxiety, depression and other conditions are increasingly visible in young people's lives, these lessons replace fear and stigma with knowledge, empathy and practical action. Seven lessons take pupils from defining what mental health actually is, through the science behind mental illness, to understanding triggers, recognising warning signs in themselves and others, and learning how to help. Crucially, it doesn't stop at awareness — pupils leave with healthy coping strategies and the tools to actively reduce stigma in their school community. Young people are more likely to notice a friend struggling than any adult. This curriculum gives them the language, the confidence and the compassion to act on it — and the self-awareness to look after their own mental health too. Carefully designed to keep learning engaging and safe, with a supporting CPD webinar for teachers. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — evidence-based, developmental, and built for real life.
Mental Illness Investigated Defining Mental Health
The opening lesson of the Mental Illness Investigated series sets the foundation for a sensitive and rigorous seven-lesson exploration of mental health and mental illness. Students establish where to get support, build their initial understanding of what mental health means, draw parallels with physical health, and explore the idea that mental health exists on a spectrum that everyone moves along throughout their lives.
The Science of Mental Illness
This lesson explores the biological and neurological basis of mental illness. Using a multi-section video ("Understanding the Biology of Mental Illness"), students learn about neurons, brain function, and how disruptions in brain networks and neurochemical messengers underpin mental ill health. PET scan evidence is introduced to show that mental illness produces observable physical changes in the brain — directly challenging the idea that it is "all in the mind".
Understanding Mental Illness
This lesson moves from brain science to the lived experience of mental illness. Students explore the four most prevalent mental health conditions affecting young people — anxiety, depression, self-harm, and eating disorders — through a structured group research and presentation activity. Each group develops a character's diary entry to explore the real day-to-day impact of their assigned condition, then presents their findings to the class.
Triggers, Protective Factors & Promoting Wellbeing
This lesson focuses on why mental illness develops — the triggers and risk factors — and, equally importantly, the protective factors and intentional actions that promote wellbeing. Students sort mental health fact-or-fiction cards, explore the Five Ways to Wellbeing, and challenge common myths and misconceptions. The lesson reinforces that looking after mental wellbeing is as intentional and important as looking after physical health.
Mental Illness — Spotting & Supporting
This lesson equips students with the practical skills to recognise early warning signs of mental illness in others, initiate supportive conversations, and signpost to appropriate help. Through the Mental Health Support MindMap, a Recognise the Warning Signs worksheet, the What Next worksheet, and real quotes from young people on how to talk to a friend, students build both the knowledge and the confidence to respond when someone they care about may be struggling.
Healthy Coping Strategies
This lesson explores the range of ways people respond to difficult situations, thoughts, and feelings — distinguishing healthy from unhealthy coping mechanisms. Through the Healthy Coping Toolbox activity, paired case studies featuring three young people (Andi, Goldin, and Zane), and a personalised "Ideas to Try" worksheet, students build a practical toolkit of strategies to manage their own mental health and support others. The lesson reinforces that coping strategies are personal and that what works for one person may not work for another.
Reducing Mental Health Stigma
The final lesson of the Mental Illness Investigated series addresses one of the most significant barriers to young people seeking help: stigma. Using an "alien" thought experiment to define stigma, two short videos (one humorous, one featuring young people sharing real experiences), and group work drawing on the See Me campaign's ideas for challenging stigma, students create a Class Charter of five commitments to reduce mental health stigma in their school community. The lesson closes with a Looking Back & Forwards reflection on the full seven-lesson series.
Resilient Relationships
Resilient Relationships — Because the Quality of Our Relationships Shapes Everything The relationships young people form in adolescence set patterns that last a lifetime. This curriculum helps them get it right. Resilient Relationships is a seven-lesson curriculum that goes far beyond basic relationships education. It connects the resilience skills pupils have been building since Year 7 directly to the relationships in their lives — friendships, family, romantic relationships and the deeper beliefs that drive how they connect with others. Pupils explore what healthy and unhealthy relationships actually look like, how to set boundaries and communicate assertively, and how to recognise the signs of abusive relationships. Uniquely, the curriculum goes deeper into Big Sticky Beliefs — the deeply held, often unconscious beliefs that shape how we behave in relationships and how we see ourselves within them. Understanding and shifting these is where real, lasting change happens. Relationships and Sex Education is statutory. But this curriculum goes well beyond compliance. Research shows that reinforcing resilience skills across different, relevant topics — including relationships — is what makes those skills truly transferable. Young people don't just learn about relationships; they learn about themselves. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — evidence-based, developmental, and built for real life.
Resilient Relationships - Introduction
The opening lesson of the Resilient Relationships series reconnects students with the core Resilience Skills from earlier modules and applies them to relationships for the first time. Students revisit the ABC model (Activating event–Beliefs–Consequences) in the context of relationships, explore the full spectrum of relationship types, distinguish healthy from unhealthy relationships, examine the beliefs that help and hinder them, and build their understanding of healthy relationship foundations through a relationship triangle model. The lesson also covers the role of sex in relationships and the importance of building strong foundations before deepening connection.
Healthy Boundaries
This lesson explores what healthy relationship boundaries are, why they matter, and how to set and communicate them assertively. Using the "Smart Love" framework, relationship scenarios, and the assertive communication technique revisited from Year 8, students practise boundary-setting conversations — including how to end a romantic relationship. The lesson also addresses toxic and abusive relationships, warning signs to watch for, and where to seek help if someone feels unsafe.
Relationship Characteristics and Parental Responsibility
This lesson broadens the focus from romantic relationships to the responsibilities that come with parenthood, and deepens students' understanding of consent. A structured debate on common consent myths opens the lesson before students complete a relationship-type quiz. The lesson then shifts to parental responsibility — legal, emotional, and financial — culminating in a group activity where students consider everything that needs to be in place before bringing a child into the world.
Big Sticky Beliefs and Relationships
This lesson introduces Big Sticky Beliefs (BSBs) — the deep, often invisible assumptions people hold about how the world should be — and explores how they differ from the situation-specific Gremlin Beliefs studied in earlier modules. Through the ABC model, case studies (Hannah, Jenny, and the recurring character Dennis), and reflective pair work, students learn to recognise when an overreaction in a relationship is being driven by an underlying BSB, and begin exploring their own world-view beliefs.
Identifying Big Sticky Beliefs
Building on the introduction to Big Sticky Beliefs (BSBs) from Lesson 4, this lesson equips students with a practical technique - "what" questions, for identifying BSBs in themselves and others. Students begin with a relaxing music exercise, then explore their own world-view through anonymous sentence completions. Using the Bodhi case study and a set of "what" question prompts, pairs practise drawing out BSBs, before the lesson closes with personal reflection on times they have overreacted and what underlying BSBs might have driven those reactions.
BSBs and Human Connections
This lesson deepens students' understanding of Big Sticky Beliefs (BSBs) by showing how they drive out-of-proportion reactions in real relationship situations, and then teaches students how to modify or challenge unhelpful BSBs. Through a Take 5 breathing exercise, short drama performances based on three relationship Activating Events, and guided evidence-checking using Lucas as a worked example, students practise noticing when a BSB is "in play" and reworking their ABC to reach a more helpful response.
BSBs and Planning for the Future
The final lesson of the Resilient Relationships series brings together everything students have learned about Big Sticky Beliefs and resilience skills, and projects them forward into the future. Using the Lucas example as a bridge from the previous lesson, students consider how the BSBs they hold now could shape their lives in ten years' time, create a personal Resilience Plan, and reflect on the lasting benefits of the resilience skills for their relationships and wellbeing.
Resilient Decisions
Resilient Decisions — Because Good Decisions Start With a Healthy Mind Adolescence is the moment young people start shaping their own lives. This curriculum helps them do it well. Resilient Decisions is a five-lesson Year 10 curriculum that brings the full arc of Healthy Minds learning to bear on one of the most critical skills of adult life — making good decisions. At a time when young people are growing in independence and beginning to navigate genuinely complex choices, it equips them with the self-awareness, communication skills and psychological fitness to think clearly and act wisely. Pupils explore how to handle ambiguity and complexity, how to assess risk and opportunity, and how to communicate assertively when decisions are hard. Crucially, the curriculum doesn't shy away from the real decisions young people face — including in romantic relationships — treating them as capable, thoughtful individuals who deserve honest, respectful education. A healthy mind is the foundation of sound decision-making. By Year 10, pupils have built a substantial toolkit of resilience skills — this curriculum shows them how those skills apply directly to the choices in front of them, now and in the future. Whatever start they've had in life, they have something to offer and the capacity to choose well. Fully representative and adaptable, so every pupil sees themselves in the material. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — evidence-based, developmental, and built for real life.
Ambiguity, Complexity and Independent Thinking
The opening lesson of the Resilient Decisions series introduces students to decision-making in the context of ambiguity — situations where there is no clearly "right" answer. Through a drawing activity with a surprise marking scheme, personal dilemmas in pairs, and group dilemma discussions, students experience first-hand the discomfort of uncertainty and begin exploring how resilience skills can help them navigate it. The lesson closes with a breathing exercise using Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" to illustrate that all choices carry uncertainty.
Assessing Risk and Opportunity
This lesson applies the ABC model directly to risk and opportunity scenarios, showing how Gremlin Beliefs can lead to poor decisions in both directions — giving in to peer pressure on risk, or backing away from genuine opportunity. Students learn the "Hot Seat" technique for disputing Gremlin Beliefs in the moment, and explore how peer influence — positive and negative — shapes real-life decision-making.
Assertive Communication and Decision Making
This lesson returns to the assertive communication technique and extends it into the context of decision-making and negotiation. A morally complex friendship dilemma is explored through "Conscience Alley" — a physical drama activity where the class line up as pros and cons while one student walks between them as the protagonist. Students then practise assertive communication, negotiation, and empathy in small-group role plays, learning to communicate difficult decisions effectively even when others disagree.
Decision Making in Romantic Relationships
This lesson applies the resilience skills to decisions specifically within romantic relationships, including sex and relationship safety. A Yes/No/Not Sure team debate on nine morally complex statements opens the conversation, before the ABC model is used to show how Beliefs drive decisions in potentially unsafe relationship situations. Students explore the beliefs that might lead someone toward or away from having sex, and the lesson closes with clear information on the forms of relationship abuse and where to seek help.
Reviewing How We Make Decisions
The final lesson of the Resilient Decisions series consolidates everything students have learned through a creative group challenge: designing and pitching a "Decision Making App" for teenagers. This playful, competitive activity requires each group to draw on the full range of resilience skills covered across the series and articulate them in a two-minute pitch to the class. The lesson closes by summarising the five core benefits of resilience for decision-making.
Resilient Learner
Resilient Learners — Because How You Learn Matters as Much as What You Learn Exams are coming. Pressure is building. This curriculum gives young people the mindset and tools to meet it. Resilient Learners is a seven-lesson Year 10 curriculum that turns the resilience skills pupils have developed throughout Healthy Minds directly onto their experience as learners. At a pivotal academic moment, it helps young people understand what gets in the way of their best, and what unlocks it. Pupils explore barriers to success, learning priorities and strategies, growth versus fixed mindsets, and how to manage anxiety when the stakes feel high. They build personal action plans, learn to harness emotions for performance rather than be derailed by them, and finish by identifying the personal strengths that will carry them forward — not just through exams, but through life. The curriculum culminates with a strengths lesson grounded in evidence that starting from what we're good at makes us more likely to respond effectively to setbacks, seize opportunities and thrive. Pupils are even encouraged to become strengths champions — taking the learning to younger students, staff or their wider community. Academic pressure without psychological fitness is a recipe for anxiety and underperformance. This curriculum builds both together — because the most resilient learner isn't the one who works hardest, it's the one who knows themselves best. Part of the Bounce Forward Healthy Minds suite — evidence-based, developmental, and built for real life.
Barriers to Success
The opening lesson of the Resilient Learner series applies the resilience skills to the experience of studying and exams. Students map their personal learning journey on a timeline, identifying highs and lows, what enables them to perform at their best, and the beliefs that helped or hindered them. The ABC model is briefly revisited through a relatable exam scenario to reconnect students with the link between thinking, feeling, and behaviour in an academic context.
Learning Priority and Strategies
This lesson helps students identify their personal strengths and weaknesses across four key learning capabilities, then learn from each other through a structured peer-teaching carousel. By self-assessing their confidence in Perseverance, Getting Going, Keeping It in Perspective, and Moving Forward, students group themselves by their strongest capability and take turns both teaching and learning from their peers, exploring the Beliefs that underpin each capability.
Learning Mindsets
This lesson introduces Carol Dweck's fixed versus growth mindset theory and frames it within the resilience skills language students already know (mindsets as clusters of Big Sticky Beliefs). Students explore their beliefs about intelligence through an Agree/Disagree scale, a mindset grid activity, paired role-playing of fixed and growth mindset responses, a short video about brain plasticity, and a group evidence-gathering exercise — building a compelling case for why a growth mindset is more helpful for learning.
Dealing with Anxiety
This lesson focuses specifically on how anxiety interferes with learning and exam performance, and reinforces two key tools for managing it: calming and focusing techniques (harnessing emotions) and WoBbLe (taming catastrophising Gremlin Beliefs). Through an ABC worked example where the Consequence is given first, students identify what Activating Events and Beliefs might be driving exam-related anxiety, then practise WoBbLe on three real exam-pressure scenarios.
Action Planning
This lesson brings together all four Learning Action Plans completed across the series and consolidates the skills into a personal forward-planning document. Students first practise using the skills "in the moment" through the Hot Seat activity with an exam-day social stressor scenario, then write a detailed personal plan covering Gremlin Beliefs, learning capabilities, strategies, support networks, and self-reward. The lesson closes with a Q&A opportunity and a summary of the five core benefits of resilience for learning.
Emotions, Energy and Performance
This lesson introduces the Emotions, Energy and Performance model from sports psychology — a four-quadrant grid (positive/negative emotion × high/low energy) that maps emotional states to performance zones: Thriving, Survival, Burnout, and Recovery. Students explore where their emotions currently sit, what beliefs keep them from prioritising recovery, and what practical actions they can take to achieve the right personal ratio of high performance and effective recovery — particularly in the lead-up to exams. The Five Ways to Wellbeing are revisited as a source of recovery ideas.
Strengths
The final lesson of the Resilient Learner series — and of the complete Healthy Minds curriculum — draws on the work of the VIA Institute on Character to help students identify and articulate their personal strengths. Through a focused listening exercise, a strengths card exploration, a small-group presentation, and a discussion connecting strengths to the Energy and Performance grid, students leave with a clearer sense of who they are at their best and how to use their strengths intentionally going forward. The lesson closes by encouraging students to use their strengths to write a personal statement for life beyond Year 11.
About the organisation
Bounce Forward
Bounce Forward is a registered charity on a mission to transform how we think about mental health, shifting the narrative from deficit and crisis to strength, prevention, and psychological fitness. They create evidence-based programmes, curricula, and training that give young people, school staff, and the adults around children the knowledge, language, and daily habits to build genuine mental resilience. From whole-staff training to five-year school curricula, everything they do is practical, grounded in science, and designed to make a lasting difference not just in the moment, but across a lifetime.