Confidence in a student is the belief that they can attempt something, cope when it feels difficult, and try again if it doesn’t go well. It isn’t the same as being loud or outgoing. Confidence grows through experience: a student tries something challenging, gets through it, receives useful feedback, and has another opportunity to try.
This guide covers practical confidence building activities for students, including classroom activities, team challenges, sport, and strategies for students who are reluctant to participate.
What Does Confidence Look Like in Students?
Confidence often shows up as willingness to participate, ask for help, handle mistakes, and keep trying.
You might see it in a student who:
- Puts their hand up even when unsure
- Asks a question in front of others
- Tries again after getting something wrong
- Works with classmates outside their usual friendship group
- Accepts feedback without shutting down
Quiet students aren’t necessarily unconfident, and talkative students aren’t necessarily confident. Look at how a student responds to difficulty rather than how much they speak.
Why Is Building Confidence in Students Important?
Confidence can influence how willing students are to take on challenges, participate with others, and recover from setbacks. A student who doubts themselves may avoid situations that could help them grow, such as speaking up, trying a new activity, or working in a group.
Confidence doesn’t mean always knowing the answer. It means being willing to try, learn, and find out.
Confidence-Building Activities for Students
Effective activities to build confidence in students are usually small, repeatable, and low-risk at first. The goal is to give students opportunities to succeed, reflect on what they did, and gradually take on something more challenging.
Student-Led Activities
Giving students responsibility shows that their contribution is trusted and gives them opportunities to practise leadership. At Coomealla High School, students designed and led a traditional games festival for primary students, with staff guidance.
- Warm-up leader: A different student leads the opening activity each week.
- Mini-lessons: Students explain a simple concept to a partner or small group.
- Class roles: Rotate responsibilities such as equipment manager, timekeeper, or discussion starter.
- Student-chosen questions: Students suggest and vote on a question for class discussion.
Strengths and Achievement Activities
These activities help students recognise what they can already do and use that evidence when facing something difficult.
- Strengths cards: Choose two or three strengths and give an example of each.
- Evidence wall: Record things students have learned or improved.
- Then and now: Compare earlier work with recent work.
- Achievement journal: Write about something they did that they weren’t sure they could do.
- Peer recognition: Students identify a specific strength they have noticed in a classmate.
Communication and Speaking Activities
Start with low-risk communication before moving students towards larger audiences. At Toronto High School, a student council built up to a pitch to a panel over a 10-week program, and one student said public speaking felt easier afterwards.
- Think-pair-share: Think individually, discuss with a partner, then share with the class.
- One-minute talks: Speak briefly about a familiar interest or hobby.
- Partner interviews: Interview a classmate and introduce them to a small group.
- Small-group reading: Practise reading aloud to three or four people before a full class.
Goal-Setting Activities
Small goals make progress visible and give students something specific to work towards.
- Set one achievable weekly goal.
- Break a larger goal into three smaller steps.
- Use short weekly check-ins to discuss what worked and what could change.
Creative and Problem-Solving Activities
Open-ended activities give students opportunities to contribute without always looking for one correct answer.
- Design challenges: Build a paper bridge or design a better playground.
- Group storytelling: Each student contributes one part of a shared story.
- Multiple-solution challenges: Find different ways to solve the same problem.
Team Confidence-Building Activities
Team activities can build confidence when every student has a meaningful role and can see how they contributed. They become less useful when a few confident students do everything.
Cooperative Team Challenges
Give each student a defined responsibility during a shared task. For example, a tower-building challenge could include a builder, materials manager, timekeeper and spokesperson.
Problem-Solving Challenges
Group puzzles, mystery clues and escape-room-style activities can encourage students to share ideas and rotate leadership. Older students practise similar skills when they settle small disagreements while supporting younger students.
Team Sport Activities
Modified team games can make participation more important than the final score. A rule such as “everyone must touch the ball before we can shoot” can encourage wider participation. At Illawarra Sports High School, Year 9 and 10 peer coaches used modified games that put participation ahead of competition.
Peer Support Activities
Buddy pairs give students someone to check in with, while activities such as a “two good things” round encourage specific and positive feedback between classmates.
What Sports Build Confidence in Students?
There is no single sport that builds confidence for every student. Sports that provide opportunities to practise skills, contribute to a group, improve over time and receive support can create useful experiences for confidence development.
Team Sports
Netball, basketball, football and cricket can provide opportunities for teamwork, communication and shared responsibility. A student’s contribution can matter even when they aren’t the highest scorer.
Individual and Skill-Based Sports
Swimming, athletics, gymnastics and martial arts can make personal progress visible through a new skill, improved performance or progression to a higher level. These activities may also suit students who prefer individual challenges.
Student-Led Sport Activities
Students can build different skills when they move beyond participation and take responsibility for a warm-up, umpiring, designing a modified game, or helping younger students.
How to Build Confidence in Students Who Are Reluctant to Participate
A useful starting point is to lower the risk of taking part rather than pushing a reluctant student into the spotlight.
Start With Small Responsibilities
Give the student a manageable role such as handing out equipment, holding the timer, or reading one line.
Give Students Choices
Let students choose between different roles or ways of participating where possible. Having some control can make participation feel more manageable.
Use Pairs and Small Groups
Students who are reluctant to speak to a whole class may find it easier to contribute to a partner or small group first.
Recognise Effort and Progress
Be specific about what the student did. “You tried a harder question today” gives more useful feedback than simply saying “good job.”
Give Students Repeated Opportunities to Practise
Confidence is unlikely to change after one activity. Repeated opportunities to participate, practise and reflect allow students to build experience over time.
Confidence-Building Strategies for Students
Confidence-building strategies work best when they become part of the wider classroom or program culture.
Create a Safe Environment
Students need to know that making a mistake or giving a wrong answer won’t result in ridicule. Set clear expectations for respectful behaviour and act when those expectations aren’t met.
Give Students Meaningful Responsibility
A responsibility has more value when the group genuinely depends on it. Real tasks can give students stronger reasons to participate and follow through. Programs that ask students to take initiative, such as taking charge of part of a session unprompted, show how this plays out.
Encourage Specific Feedback
Specific feedback tells students what they did well and what they can repeat. “Your example made the point clear” is more useful than general praise.
Help Students Learn From Mistakes
Ask, “What would you try next?” rather than treating a mistake as the end of the task. Adults can model this by calmly acknowledging their own mistakes and explaining what they will try differently.
Connect Activities to Students’ Strengths
Starting with something a student already does well can provide a foundation for trying something harder. A student who is confident at drawing, for example, could present a diagram before moving towards a longer spoken presentation.
What Is a Youth Confidence-Building Program?
A youth confidence-building program is a structured program that gives young people repeated opportunities to develop confidence, resilience, communication and social skills.
Unlike a one-off activity, a structured program builds skills over time. Sessions can combine guided activities, teamwork, reflection, leadership and increasing responsibility. The main features of effective youth development programs follow a similar pattern.
For schools, this can provide a more consistent approach to building confidence than relying on a single activity or event.
How Creating Chances Builds Confidence Through Youth Development
Through sport-based youth programs, builds confidence by giving students opportunities to take responsibility. Students can begin with personal development through Champions and progress into leadership opportunities through Coach, as steps in a youth development pathway.
Champions
Champions is designed for students in Years 7 to 9 and focuses on personal development, self-awareness and positive relationships.
At Kanahooka High School, students completed a full term of Champions before moving into Coach. This gave them a foundation in personal development before taking on leadership responsibilities.
Coach
Coach is designed for students in Years 9 and 10 and gives students opportunities to plan and lead sport sessions for younger students.
At Kanahooka, students began developing and delivering weekly sessions from session five of the 10-week program. They received opportunities to practise leadership, receive feedback and reflect on their sessions.
What Creating Chances Reports
Creating Chances reports that students participating in Coach and Champions programs on the Central Coast showed a 15% increase in school belonging and a 14% improvement in resilience.
These are Creating Chances’ own reported figures. They measure belonging and resilience rather than a single “confidence” score, and the published story does not provide the sample size, timeframe or detailed survey method alongside the figures. They should therefore be understood as organisation-reported outcomes rather than independent evidence that the programs alone caused the changes.
How Schools Can Use Confidence-Building Activities Every Day
Schools don’t need a separate program for every confidence-building activity. Small routines can be built into existing lessons and activities.
- Daily: Use think-pair-share or rotate a classroom responsibility.
- Weekly: Set one achievable goal and include a short speaking activity.
- Each term: Run a team challenge and give students an opportunity to lead.
- Ongoing: Give specific feedback and treat mistakes as opportunities to learn.
The main takeaway is simple: building confidence in students comes from repetition, not intensity. Small tasks with real responsibility, repeated regularly, can help students develop a stronger belief in their ability to try, contribute and keep going.
