With the Winter Olympics coming up in February, now is the perfect time to bring culture inclusion into the classroom. The Olympics provide exciting times where students can look into the sport, and the countries of the athletes competing.
Most primary Language Arts curriculums include research objectives. Also, Social Studies objectives include global connection, so the Olympics is a win-win. Your students will love diving into the sport they choose. When they have a choice, engagement goes way way up! Some Olympic Activity Ideas:
1. Informational Reading
2. Expository Writing
3. Speaking/Listening Activities
4. Art & Geography Activities
Olympic Informational Reading
Since it is so late in the year, students are able to access higher level content. I made an Informational Reading Passages resource. I included 20 different sports events. You can take a look by clicking the photo on the left.
Another idea is to send home a family questionnaire about ancestry. Students can make flags of the country of their ancestors to display around the room. If they can’t name the country of origin, just have them choose an interesting country. Bring in library books of as many countries as you can find.
Here’s the link to my Winter Olympics resource. You can check it out by clicking on the cover on the left. Your students can read simple passages about the sport, its vocabulary, and the rules of the even. There are even short video links for them to see it in action. They end the project by writing about their chosen event.
Olympics Reports
If you let the kids choose their sport, they can read, research, then write simple nonfiction reports. You could do this in pairs, or individually. You could work together, writing sentence starters on the board, then letting students use their resource to fill in facts specific to their sport.
If you keep the reports simple, you can cover your objectives and have fun at the same time:
- Title Page
- Introduction
- Fact
- Fact
- Fact
- conclusion
Your student will love illustrating each page, especially if you let them go to Olympics.com to play the short trailer videos. This also gives you the time to help them edit their white board sentences before writing in the book. When you they are all finished, you can have everyone read their book to the class. This takes a while, and will give you some much-needed testing time.
Speaking & Listening Activities
Here’s where the real fun comes! When they choose their event, students love to engage in class discussion. And we all know they are ready to talk in May! There are many, many things you could do.
- Discuss your favorite Event- Vote as a class after discussion.
- Share out your country research, or make a video.
- What Event do you think should be included in the Olympics?
Art & Geography Activities
Part of Olympic excitement is seeing the flags of the nations. Use the reading and research to make a flag of the country studied. Display around the room. Then have the kids make triangle pennants illustrated with customs of that country.
Another objective you can work into these lessons is geography. It is sometimes hard to include world geography. Olympics is perfect for widening your scope to the globe! Make a huge world map on your biggest bulletin board. . Keep track of the medals right on the country.
Thanks for reading! I hope you got a pearl or two. If you liked what you read, check out my other blogs here.
