Rites
of Passage: Sports and the Olympics in Literature
One way to engage and motivate students is to tie instruction to
existing interests and current events. This resource guide presents
connections between the language arts classroom and the world at
large through a focus on the Olympic Games--past, present and future.
Use the resources presented in this guide to enhance your classroom
instruction with motivating tie-ins to stories of growth and courage.
Olympic
Cities
In this resource guide we've highlighted some of the cities that
have hosted or will host the Olympic Games. You'll find information
on Sydney, Australia for Olympics 2000 that includes a virtual
tour of Sydney along with "Must See" sights in this Olympic city.
You'll be able to send postcards from some of the Olympic cities
while you and your students learn about the geography, history
and culture of the host metropolitan areas. We've featured Sydney,
Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Nagano, Barcelona, Moscow, Los Angeles,
and modern Greece, but there are many additional Olympic hosts
you can visit online with your students. We've included a listing
of all the host cities from 1896 to the present. This Resource
Guide is a travel guide, so to speak, for some of the Olympic
cities. Using these resources, together with the publicity surrounding
the Olympic Games, you'll be ready for wonderful geography lessons
related to not only to the Olympic cities, but also to the countries
of the world that send teams or individual athletes to the competitions.
Sports
Stastics
Sporting events, particularly track and field and swimming, provide
an enormous amount of data that can be analyzed statistically
with simple methods such as line and bar graphs. The results of
such analyses are easy to comprehend: you can compare countries
and regions, detect trends, and predict future results. It is
also possible to locate dominant performances in an event and
paradigm shifts: moments when a single athlete discovered a new
way of excelling at an event. This guide provides links to sources
of Olympic, track and field, and swimming data organized in various
ways, a sample classroom activity, and an on-line statistical
graphing and analysis resource.
Sports
Science
Sports are studied by scientists both to better understand human
motion and to assist the training of athletes. The disciplines
involved are usually sports physics and biomechanics.
This resource guide includes several sports physics education
sites, the excellent biomechanics site at Georgia Tech, several
separate pages on different sports, and VideoPoint, a software
package for plotting trajectories on video.
Olympic
History: Controversies, Boycotts and Upsets
The Olympics brings together top individual and team athletes
from around the world. Unfortunately, controversy and political
boycotts often mar these games. This guide highlights the events
of past Olympiads that have taken away from the celebration of
sport and athleticism.
Olympic
Heroes
Watching our Olympic heroes struggle to triumph, to attain a place
in history. Knowing these athletes have devoted most of their
life to reach the pinnacle of their profession and then for most
of them - poof - the chance is gone. This struggle and
the risk it entails is what raises their efforts to heroic levels.
This resource guide provides profiles of many of these Olympians,
a history of the Olympic games, up to the minute Olympic information
sources, and lesson plans to tie it all together.
The
Olympic Games from Ancient to Modern
The ancient Olympic Games were held for over a millenium; the
modern games have been held for just over a century. Many things
have changed from ancient to modern times, but a surprising number
of elements remain the same in the games. The resources collected
here provide a starting point for research on the history of the
Olympic Games, and how they have developed over time--from antiquity,
through a nineteenth century revival to the present.
Mathematics
of the Olympic Games
What ideas and approaches can be used during the Olympics as a
context for teaching mathematics? From calculating distances and
velocities in track and field to the statistics of baseball to
charting medal winners, athletic competition is filled with opportunities
for demonstrating the practical applications of mathematics. The
resource collected in this guide provide many ideas, including
lesson plans, a research project, and a wide variety of other
activities that link mathematics to the Olympic Games.
The
Summer Olympics: Sydney 2000
Citius, altius, fortius. "Swifter, higher, stronger." The
Olympic Games are many things: an exhibition of athletic excellence,
pomp and ceremony, national pride, peaceful international competition,
courage, perserverance, and a celebration of the indomitable human
spirit. From September 15 to October 1, 2000, this panoply of
tradition and emotion will be held in Sydney, Australia. The resources
collected here provide information about the Sydney games, including
news sites, several official Olympic sites, a virtual tour of
Sydney, and more.ball discover the history and the magic of Negro
League Baseball.
Coming
of Age
Thirteen year old students from around the world experience "coming
of age" through a variety of rituals, literature, and religious
custom. This Unit of Practice draws on the common threads of "initiation
literature" as students read, do word-processing, and develop
a multimedia web page.
The
Effects of Smoking on Athletic Performance
Smoking and its connection to chronic illness is becoming a major
controversy in our society, and yet cigarette companies continue
to make adolescents and teens their target market. In this unit,
students use digital cameras, activities in the gym, data collected
on spreadsheets, and the Internet to make an informed decision
about whether to make smoking a part of their lives..
Comparing
Olympic Records
Need FRStudents will dig in the record books and/or on the Internet
to find recent Olympic Records. They will compare these records
using manipulatives and numerical calculations to determine which
records have been broken in the last Olympics, and by how much.
Follow
That Team!
Students track professional sports teams, recording and calculating
such things as miles traveled, individual and team statistics
and other information which that allows for practicing math skills.
This unit is divided into two categories: travel and statistics.
Statistics is divided into teams and individual stats for football
and basketball.
Ancient
Greeks
Sixth grade students work with their teacher to identify areas
of commonality in second and sixth grade studies targeting ancient
Greece. Using this information and other resources they gather,
they create HyperCard units of study. These units are then presented
by the sixth graders to the second grade classes. The unit provides
a nice way for both sixth graders and second graders to to learn
more about ancient Greece and each other, too.
Gold
Medal Lessons with Technology
Students work in cooperative learning groups at computers to research
selected Olympic events. They use Internet resources to locate
the information they need. Based upon their findings, they prepare
a multimedia presentation using slideshow presentation software.
The presentations reflect their knowledge and understanding of
the different Olympic events.
Olympic
Countries
Using the 2000 Olympic Games in Australia, students learn about
the countries of all the participants. They use traditional and
online resources as they work in teams to create multimedia presentations
about the different countries. The unit emphasizes geography,
culture, history, in addition to uses of technologies in the preparation
of exciting presentations.
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ASC
Olympic Fact Sheets
The Australian Sports Commission provides this set of fact sheets
on the Olympics. Topics covered include the history of the ancient
and modern games, discontinued and demonstration sports, and issues
such as women, politics, drugs, and technology and the Olympics.
Pierre
De Coubertin's Speech
In this speech from the introduction of the first modern Olympic
Games in 1896, Pierre De Coubertin, considered the father of the
modern Olympics, explains how and why he worked so hard to revive
the games.
Olympic
Information Center
This resource contains "one of the world's largest collections
of materials pertaining to the Olympic Games...from digitized
copies of Olympic Official Reports to Java-based Web games for
kids of all ages." Use this resource, with its many fascinating
links, to tie lessons to the world of amateur athletics.
Sydney
2000
This is the official site for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney,
Australia. Sections include sports, news, event schedules, information
about Sydney, and much more..
Sydney
2000 Teachers Page
Here you will find a set of six Learning Centres for you to use
in your classroom. The variety of tasks from the Kids site of
the Official Sydney 2000 Olympic Games website cover learning
areas including English, mathematics, science, studies of society
and environments, technology, music and visual arts. While the
students move through each Learning Centre they will be working
both online and offline. For the offline tasks, resources are
provided for you to download and copy.
The
Real Story of the Ancient Olympics
"We may not realize it, but in today's games we recreate -- with
surprising accuracy -- the climate and circumstances surrounding
the ancient Olympic Games." This includes politics, nationalism
and commercialism. Full of lively writing, this site pokes holes
in the myths that surround the ancient Olympic games.
Pierre de Coubertin, founder
of the modern Olympics: "We have not worked, my friends and
I, to render you the Olympic Games to make of them a museum piece
or a movie, nor for commercial or electoral interests to take
over."
Olga Korbut, Soviet gymnast, who greatly increased the popularity
of gymnastics with her performance at the 1972 Games: "I can't
believe that girl who won the medals is really me. I can't understand
how it all happened. I did not intentionally set out to be a star."
Werner Heisenberg, (1901-1976): "An expert is someone who
knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject,
and how to avoid them."
The Olympic Oath:
"In the name of all competitors I promise that we will take part
in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which
govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory
of the sport and the honor of our teams."
The Stadium in full bloom.
The stadium where the Olympics Games will be held in 2000.
Olmpics:
The ancient Greek Olympic games included poetry, music and athletic
competition. Modern Olympic games are usually scheduled every
four years and include athletic competition.
Compete:
Compete is a verb meaning to be in rivalry and to vie against.
The noun "competitor" is a person, a business, a team, etc. that
competes.
Gamesmanship and Sportsmanship:
Gamesmanship refers to having the skill to gain victory over an
opponent in a game. Sportsmanship also may mean skill in a sport
or appreciation of a sport. In schools, sportsmanship often refers
to playing fair and following the rules of a game.
Olympiad:
In ancient Greece an "Olympiad" was the period of four years that
came between Olympic games. It was a unit of time. Today we use
the word to mean the Olympic Games themselves.
Olympian:
The ancient Greek meaning of "Olympian" referred to the gods that
lived on Mount Olympus. To be "Olympian" is to be godlike. Today
the competitors in the Olympic Games are called Olympians.
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