What it is: The Winter Olympics are just around the corner and Vancouver has created a website to track all things Olympics. Vancouver 2010 has excellent information and links for your students to explore. On the website, students can learn about each of the winter games sports, the medals, the athletes involved, current news relating to the Olympics, photos, videos, and more. My favorite features is in More 2010 information. Here you will find the 2010 Olympic torch relay route. The torch is tracked on an interactive map. Students can follow its journey from October 30 to February 12.
How to integrate Olympic Winter Games Vancouver 2010 into the classroom: Vancouver 2010 is a well made site where your students can learn more about the winter Olympics that will be taking place in February. There are some great little videos that will teach students about each event, photos of the Olympic events, historical medals of the different countries, schedules of events, and much more. The Olympic games is a fun time for each country, students can learn more about geography, other cultures, the Olympic games, and the history of the Olympics. Track the torch as it makes its way to the games each day. Talk about the places it has been and about this history of the torch. Create a Google Earth Map where your students can keep track of the medals won by different countries throughout the games. Assign groups of students to learn about the different competitions in the winter Olympics. Each group can be assigned to learn more about the competition using the Vancouver 2010 website and use the photographs and pictures to help them present the event to the class.
Tips: The Olympic games is a great time of year to teach about teamwork, doing your best, and supporting your country. Great tie ins for character education! Check out the education programs (More information for 2010) there are great lesson plans and ideas.
Leave a comment and share how you are using Vancouver 2010 in your classroom.
I really like the tie-in with character education. This is an area that is sorely lacking in our curriculum and should be addressed whenever a teachable moment pops up. We need to take the time to teach the WHOLE student- the academic side isn’t much good if it isn’t tempered with common sense and a sense of where they fit into the rest of the world. Each kid has something of value to offer.
This looks really interesting. I may use it with my children next month. They had a good time with the summer olympics and we learned a lot. I think this website would be very helpful.
I like the way the information on each sport is presented in text linked on the right. It provides a good opportunity for older elem. or middle school students to practice their note-taking skills, allowing pairs or small groups of students to present a sport to their classmates.
I’m actually a little disappointed, though, that there’s not a version of the site made specifically for younger children. The readability in the site is just too high for most elem. students.
I’m with you, I do wish they had included more elementary friendly reading on the site. I was wondering if Scholastic, Time For Kids, etc. would come up with a good supplement for elementary students.
Definitely! Character education does seem to be lacking, I think that a lot of times we think that character education is common sense behavior. We shouldn’t take it for granted that students will figure it out, just like everything else it has to be taught and nurtured.
Thank you so much for this post! I’ve been thinking about how I can use the Olympics with my middle school students. My favorite part of every Olympics is the stories about those athletes who had to struggle to achieve their dreams. I want to be able to use those stories as character education lessons with my students.
Also, I love the matrix found on the More 2010 page! So easy to use!!
Thanks, Kelly!