Big Feelings – Understanding Stress

Healthy, practical strategies for understanding and managing stress.

Stress and pressure are a normal part of life, but many young people are never explicitly taught how to recognise them or respond in healthy ways.

This complete unit helps students understand what stress is, where pressure comes from and, most importantly, what they can do when life feels overwhelming. Through realistic scenarios, engaging discussion, reflection activities and practical coping strategies, students build confidence in recognising stress and developing positive habits that support emotional wellbeing.

Throughout the unit, students create their own Personal Stress Toolkit, giving them a collection of strategies and trusted sources of support they can continue using beyond the classroom.

Unit includes
Lesson 1 – What Is Stress?
Lesson 2 – Pressure Inside and Outside School
Lesson 3 – Healthy Ways to Cope
Lesson 4 – Managing Pressure

Each lesson includes:

Full PowerPoint
Matching student workbook
Discussion and reflection activities
Real-life scenarios using recurring student characters
Practical wellbeing strategies
Retrieval activities and vocabulary tasks
Personal Stress Toolkit activities
Assessment materials
Teacher guidance

Designed with a consistent visual style and clear lesson structure, this unit can be taught as a standalone sequence or as part of the wider Big Feelings emotional wellbeing curriculum.