Competition is an integral aspect of many physical education lessons, and one of the central characteristics of units and lessons adopting the Sport Education model. Pedagogy has a key, yet under-researched, role to play in supporting students to develop social and emotional skills that will enable them to cope with situations in which they encounter failure in physical education and sport. This paper reports on research undertaken in a Singaporean primary school that explored the modification of the Sport Education model and utilization of pedagogical strategies to respond to students' limited skills and abilities to handle failure in the context of physical education. The study adopted a qualitative approach and used questionnaires, focus group discussions and structured observations to collect quantitative and qualitative data from students participating in the modified Sport Education unit. The discussion of findings focusses on the effects of confidence-building strategies on the students' emotional resilience in relation to failure and the pedagogical skills needed to facilitate this learning process.