Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a great topic for linking with Sport, geography, identity and cultural diversity. Pupils can learn about the games and the significance of the olympic rings. They can find out about how often the games take place and in which countries they have/are going to be held.

Pupils can go to the following Olympic Games websites and learn about the many different sports that are part of the event. The images on each of the websites could be used for card matching activities or bingo games.
The websites also have information about the athletes that are taking part.

Profiles

Use the athlete profiles and questionnaire to learn about sports, countries and
vocabulary relating to sport together with the questionnaire. Print off the profiles, laminate and place round the classroom. Questionnaire pdf, profiles French, German, Spanish pdfs

Look at the following sites and ask pupils to find the nouns in the target language for a selection of the sports.

Spanish: http://www.juegos-olimpicos.com/

Click on section Deportes and the names of the sports and the images will appear

French: http://www.olympic.org/fr/sports/index_fr.asp

Click on Sports. Run mouse over the name of the sport and the image will appear.

Alternatively if you have flash, go to the following site.
http://www.olympic.org/fr/sports/flash/summer/index_fr.asp

German: http://www.chinaseite.de/olympia-2008/olympia-sportarten-2008.html

Go to the above website and look at the list of sports and images relating to the summer olympics.

Relevance to the New Curriculum:

Key Concepts:

Linguistic Competence: Developing the skills of reading and looking for key details.

Intercultural Understanding: Developing an international outlook, finding out about the Olympic Games, the history, politics and participants from across the world.

Key Processes:

Develop Language Learning Strategies: Use of cognates and context to aid
understanding.

Developing Language Skills: Respond appropriately to written texts.

Also: practice nationalities using a ‘fantasy football’ activity where pupils research players in European teams: French, German, Spanish (see links to each version under Files available for download).