The Winter Olympics and Elementary Math Lesson Plans
Tune into the many elementary math lessons, and learning opportunities during the Winter Olympic Games.
By Greg Harrison
While you might not think of the Olympic Games as a source for great lesson planning ideas, you can explore many mathematical learning opportunities during the Vancouver games. There's nothing more meaningful for students than to tie their learning to real world events. Some of my favorite teaching moments have happened during Presidential elections, in the wake of natural disasters, while studying current social issues, and......during the Olympic Games!
Here's one fun learning activity you could do with your students. If you happen to have access to the new Wii Fit Game, you could have a ski jumping competition in your classroom. Once you have hooked up the game to your classroom television, each student could get five turns to jump. Students would be responsible for keeping track of each of their jump distances, and calculating their total distance. After each student took their turns, the students who finished in the top five for total distance could have a "jump off". This time, they would get only three jumps each. The top three students would win gold, silver and bronze. This can be an exciting and memorable lesson!
Please peruse the four lesson plans I have selected below. They offer some excellent ways to infuse math about the Olympics into your teaching while the games are going on. Enjoy!
Olympic Games and Elementary Math Lesson Plans:
One of the most basic math concepts embedded in the Olympic Games is the use of the metric system. Your students will benefit from having an idea of how the metric system compares to the U.S. system of measurement. When they watch someone jump 90 meters in the ski jump to take the Gold Medal, they will have an idea of how far that really is. This thoroughly written lesson contains some excellent worksheets and on-line resources.
Students access the newspaper, or the on-line source imbedded in this lesson, to keep track of the daily Olympic results and medal counts. They can work individually, or work in groups to create bar graphs that are updated on a daily basis. This excellent lesson contains very clever ways to extend this activity across the curriculum.
Students explore the scientific properties of potential energy, acceleration, force, drag and velocity and how they relate to the Winter Olympics. Through the use of student-made tracks, they engage in hands-on activities to determine how course conditions affect the bobsled, luge, and downhill ski races. This scientific exploration includes a lot of very meaningful mathematics. This is an excellent lesson!
Winter Olympics History Year by Year
Students create charts which show historical statistics about the Winter Olympic Games. As with the previous lesson, this lesson uses mathematics and crosses over into other areas of the curriculum. The Winter Olympic Games History Worksheet can be easily amended to include the results of the 2006 games in Torino, as well as the current games in Vancouver.
Discussion Question:
What Olympic math games do you do with your students?