The long-awaited 2020 Olympic Games are finally happening this summer! Bring this awe-inspiring event to your classroom and encourage your students to learn all about the Olympic Games with Beyond’s new selection of Olympics teaching resources.
Due to COVID-19 disruptions, the 2020 Olympic Games will be held between the 24th of July and the 9th of August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. Over 200 countries will go head-to-head in 33 sports to win gold, silver and bronze medals. Your students get to take part in the fun and experience the excitement of the Olympic Games in English, Maths and Science. Here’s our latest selection of Olympics teaching resources.
English Olympics Teaching Resources
The Olympics and Paralympics
In honour of Tokyo 2020, slightly confusing I know, Beyond presents our Olympics and Paralympics Compare and Contrast Activity. It’s an exercise that’s designed to engage your students and enable them to think about the physical, psychological and spiritual characteristics of both the Olympics and Paralympics. They’ll focus on the similarities and differences and learn all about using comparative and contrasting conjunctions in their work.
It’s a quick activity which makes it a perfect starter or plenary task for English lessons, or even an easy mid-week homework activity. Get comparing and contrasting with Beyond.
The Synonym Olympics
The Olympics Games are a global event that dominates news media. There are thousands of writers devoting thousands of stories to it, meaning it always takes centre stage. With so much news coverage, sportswriters have to ensure they don’t become too repetitive in their word choices and that’s where synonyms come in.
Synonyms are substitute words that are related in meaning. For example, “ran” is a basic way of describing moving fast, but saying “bolted” raises the bar because it adds nuance to the meaning. It suggests greater urgency, focus and speed than “ran” does.
Allow your English students’ to exercise their creativity with Beyond’s Tokyo 2020 Synonym Olympics Activity. Get their mental muscles pumping with a series of basic sporty terms that need swapping out for exciting synonyms. We’re ready when you are.
Tokyo 2020 Olympics Nineteenth Century Text
One thing is certain: Beyond can turn any topic into a comprehension exercise and that’s exactly what we’ve done with our new Tokyo 2020 Olympics Nineteenth Century Text activity.
Your learners are presented with a report of the inaugural Liverpool Olympics from the Liverpool Daily Post, Monday 16 June 1862, that they must read and answer questions on. This resource is a fantastic way to recognise the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in your classroom, while developing core reading and writing skills.
Nineteenth century texts can be challenging to understand due to the use of antiquated vocabulary and grammar. This fact adds another layer of stretch for your students, as you can encourage them to identify any unfamiliar words and then use the context (or a dictionary, if necessary) to define them. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics Nineteenth Century Text Comprehension activity adds a blast from the past that’s ideal for covering the Olympic Games in your classroom.
If you enjoy that, there’s even more reading comprehension from our previous Olympic Games resources that might come in handy – especially useful at this time of year!
Maths Olympics Teaching Resources
Negative Numbers Colour by Number
Bring an Olympic flair to your Maths lessons with this adding and subtracting negative numbers worksheet. It’s ideal for KS3 students and adds a fun and mindful aspect to regular lessons. This resource includes a number line that can assist those students who find it helpful to see the positive and negative numbers clearly jotted on a line. It’s perfect as a starter, extension, plenary or just general Maths practice.
Sports Day Maths
Celebrate the 2020 Olympics Games in true maths-style with Beyond’s brilliant interactive revision resource. Combining an exciting selection of track and field events with various maths tasks, this resource encourages your students to learn in a dynamic way.
The Sports Day Maths resource includes a plethora of fully differentiated revision questions based on real-world maths at an athletics track. The resource is an interactive PDF display, so students will be able to get up and click on various events to access the content. It’s aimed at KS3 classes and your students will get to explore a range of track and field events such as high jump, shot put, long jump, 200m and 5000m races. Simply click the event you want and a task will pop up for the learner to solve. All the answers are included, so marking is painless!
KS3 Revision Questions for Maths
Beyond’s mathematicians have pooled together to create this fantastic set of KS3 revision questions on a range of maths topics. Using the scenario of a swimming pool, this resource dives into topics such as area, percentage, multiplication and addition using real-world maths problems. It includes three papers that offer different levels of challenge, so there’s something for all of your students!
The revision questions can be used to test the knowledge of Year 7, 8 or 9 learners, making it perfect for the assessment period. All questions are complete with a full set of answers, making this resource ideal for self and peer assessment.
Science Olympics Teaching Resources
100m Sprint Times – Calculating Speed
Beyond brings science and sport together with this Olympics-themed Calculating Speed worksheet. Your students are asked to calculate the speed of a series of Olympians from different disciplines, using their 100m sprint times.
The worksheet provides the sprint times of accomplished athletes such as Usain Bolt, Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis Hill. This activity also takes learners beyond the 100m sprint times and explores the record-breaking efforts of the British women’s relay team, who set a British record by completing the race in 41.81s!
The extension task requires students to calculate the difference in speed between two sets of times and distances, making this activity ideal for those students who like to go for gold! All answers are included, so marking basically does itself. You’ve got nothing to lose!
Olympic Science Line Graphs
If you didn’t know Olympic science line graphs were a thing, Beyond is here to tell you.
This fun activity uses both male and female 100m sprint times from the years 1976 to 2016 to plot and analyse the line graph, and to make scientific conclusions about the results.
The Olympic Science Line Graphs worksheet includes a comprehensive selection of tasks that work in unison with the line graph for students to complete. Students are asked to consider questions such as, “What factors are contributing towards times generally becoming faster and faster?”, to help guide their learning and encourage them to start making thoughtful connections.
Force Diagrams
This Paralympics-themed Force Diagrams resource takes the laws of push and pull to the next level. Explore the laws of force and its effects on objects in our easy-to-use PowerPoint. In this activity, your students are asked to label and explain various forces that are acting on different athletes over a sequence of force diagrams. While students work, they are encouraged to consider the size and direction of the arrow in relation to force, unbalanced and balanced pairs and opposing pairs.
This activity helps to hone their subject knowledge by including scientific terminology such as gravity, air resistance, balanced and unbalanced forces, and friction in the carefully designed slides. There are clearly labelled examples of force diagrams that have arrows showing the direction of the forces acting on the objects and the performer, so you can support students who may be struggling. Understand the forces around us with our Paralympics-themed Force Diagrams resource. May the force be with you!
Don’t forget to read even more of our blogs here! You can also subscribe to Beyond for access to thousands of secondary teaching resources. You can sign up for a free account here and take a look around at our free resources before you subscribe too.