What's your Olympics IQ?

The Olympic Games began in 776 BC at Olympia in Greece. At first, the only Olympic event was a 200-yard dash, called a stadium. In 724 BC, a two-stadia race was added. Gradually, more events were added, and in 708 BC, the pentathlon became an official event. The pentathlon consisted of five events that required different athletic skills: running, wrestling, leaping, throwing the discus, and hurling the javelin.

The victors of these games were crowned with wreaths from a sacred olive tree that grew on the Olympic Games site and near the temple of Zeus. The winners marched around the grove to the sound of a flute while admirers chanted songs written by poets of the era.

The interest in reviving the Olympics as an international event grew when the ruins of ancient Olympia were uncovered by archaeologists in the mid-nineteenth century. At the same time, Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman, sought a way to bring nations closer together, to have the youth of the world compete in sports, rather than fight in war. He founded the International Olympic Committee in 1898. It would be responsible for creating the first of the Modern International Olympic Games in Athens, Greece in 1898.

The Winter Games were added in 1928. World War I and World War II forced cancellation of the Olympics in 1916, 1940, and 1944, but they resumed in 1948 and are held every four years.

The 2008 summer games in Beijing will have 302 events in 28 sports. Almost every nation sends teams of selected athletes to take part. The purposes of the Olympic Games are to foster the ideal of a "sound mind in a sound body" and to promote friendship among nations.

Assign student to write a report of about 150 words or a two-minute PowerPoint presentation of at least seven slides.

Pathfinder
Click the Sports icon, then select Olympics.

Note that there are subtopics for the following: History; Junior Olympics; Paralympics; Special Olympics; Summer Olympics; and Winter Olympics.

The report/presentation should address at least three of the following essential questions for critical thinking (you can create others):

• What are your two favorite Olympic events and why?
• Who are your two favorite Olympics athletes and why?
• What two events do you think should be added to the Olympics and why?
• Do the current Olympics games help to foster world peace--why or why not?
• What do you think of the Winter, Junior, Paralympics, and the Special Olympics?

Essential questions for critical thinking are the teacher tools that turn ProQuest research activities from traditional and boring scavenger hunts for facts into exciting ways for students to learn and express their own reasoned opinions and original thought. These questions are examples that teachers should assign; or they may want to create others that also integrate the process of critical thinking and the Bloom Taxonomy. These questions are the key to real student learning and the transfer of that learning to other areas of the curriculum.




Discover eLibrary Science!
Exclusive Salem Press Content | Multimedia Interactives
Scholarly Journals | Current Events | Famous Scientists