Teaching about the Olympic Games in High School

The 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris begin in July 2024. Are you wondering what your students know about it? How much information do they have? The Olympic games are a current event, a nice one to tackle in the classroom. Read the blog post to get engaging ideas on teaching about the Olympic games in high school.

Taking into account that this year’s Olympics are not your students’ first games, you should consider giving them challenging activities. Most of them probably know the basic ideas about the Olympic games: they take place every 4 years, athletes from all over the world participate, there are several sports contested, and so on. But, how deep have they gone into different aspects of the games?

Teaching about the Olympic Games in High School should challenge students to investigate as much as possible taking into account their interests and current changes or trends.

Ideas on how to teach about the Olympic Games in High School
  1. Research Project Work on Olympic Games: Help your students aquire research skills by assigning them this guided project. You will also find suggested follow up activities for them to present their findings
  2. Research Project Work on the Symbols of the Olympic Games: This project work will also encourage your students to investigate using different sources. Then, you will find three creative activities for them to choose among in order to apply what was found.
  3. Research Project Work on Sports: Probably your students like different sports. They surely practise one they enjoy or one at school. Now, do they know everything about that sport? The rules? The sport’s history? This project work includes a list of all the sports involved in this Olympics. Students could choose (or be assigned) one and investigate it in detail.
  4. Research Project Work on an Athlete: Do your students have a favorite athlete? Is there someone they admire? In this porject, students could also choose (or be assigned) a sportsperson and investigate him/her in detail.
  5. Free Word Search on Olympic Sports: Last but not least, a super easy and fun activity to use as morning work, as a bell ringer or just as a trigger.

All of these research project activities can be used as a guide or as information to be delivered during oral presentations. If you need a rubric and a checklist to evaluate your students’ performance, click here!

Maybe, you do not want to go so much into teaching about the Olympic Games in High School but you want to tackle the event as an interesting current topic…you can check out ideas on how to tackle or work with current events in high school.