With the 2012 Olympics just around the corner, teachers and administrators are presented with a unique opportunity to educate students as to the history of these ancient games. Furthermore, many exercises can be developed which can contribute to active student participation within the classroom while at the same time applying their existing skill sets in a fun and exciting manner. Let us briefly examine a few ideas.
Maths
The Olympic games provide a unique prospect for students to practice and further develop their maths skills. Students could be instructed to create a graph illustrating which countries have won the most gold medals. More advanced pupils could also calculate the top five or ten countries with the most historical victories and represent their findings in either a pie chart or a bar graph. In the spirit of fostering the notion of friendly competition, Olympic-styled “races” can be held within the classroom; the student who completes a math quiz the quickest time and with the least amount of errors gets a “gold” medal, the second place the “silver” and the third the “bronze”. The teacher can even go as far as to erect a makeshift podium for the winners to stand upon.
History
The Olympics are a wonderful time to examine athletes from different parts of the world and explore the history of their respective countries. While children may often view history as a subject with little modern relevance, the presence of athletes from over two hundred different countries gathered in one venue can bring history alive in the classroom. A great way to achieve this would be to ask the students to pick their favourite athlete and give a visual presentation on that athlete’s country and the history behind it. To avoid repeat choices of popular athletes, educators may opt to randomly assign Olympic figures. This is just one of the exercises which can expand students’ interest in history while remaining fun and relevant.
Multiculturalism
The 2012 Olympics are a powerful means by which teachers can help reinforce their pupils’ beliefs and perceptions of a multicultural society. Students could be encouraged to learn another country’s national anthem and the history behind it, to bring in foods from different cultures or to design flags of foreign nations to be displayed around the school grounds.
Arts and Crafts
Art comprises an important part of any student’s curricular activities and the visual stimuli that the 2012 games provide can be a great backdrop for numerous fun and useful activities. From designing a mock Olympic torch to encouraging a class project to build a wall-sized mural of the five Olympic rings, and educator has countless options.
The main concept behind any of these activities is to promote student participation in a stimulating environment. The Olympics provide a rare opportunity to elicit an active interest from children using a variety of methods. Due to the fact that one of the primary ideas behind Olympic competition is that of competitive respect, this objective should be encouraged in all of these classroom exercises.