Olympics

The 2014 Winter Olympics begin February 7, 2014.. Below are math lessons related to the Olympics!

=Links=

Science of the Winter Olympic Games From NBCLearn and the Silicon Valley Education Foundation. The site breaks the lesson into grades 5-8 and 9-12. Although the title says science, there are several math lessons, including the following: The science lessons also have a strong math component and sound like they would be great for an interdisciplinary project.
 * Olympic Metric Conversions
 * The Internal Athlete: Cross Country Skiing

Winter Olympic Math from Scholastic These lessons are geared toward elementary, but they could be modified for middle school.

Countdown to the Winter Olympics from Education World

Winter Games Lesson Plans from the Australian Olympic Committee Another site geared toward elementary, but adaptable for middle school.

TeachersFirsts' Resources for the Olympics A large collection of links to Olympic lesson plans

[|Thematic units from The Teacher's Corner.] [|TeacherVision] [|Teacher Planet] Includes clip art and coloring pages. Olympic Printables
 * Winter Olympics
 * Summer Olympics
 * Winter Olympics

=Lesson Plans=

Fractions of a Second: An Olympic Musical At the Olympics, the blink of an eye can be all that separates the gold medalist from the 10th-place finisher. In some events, this is obvious. But in others, with athletes racing one by one, the closeness of the race is harder to perceive. Listen to the differences in this lesson from the New York Times.

Drawing the Olympic Rings Logo Use a compass and measuring skills to draw the Olympic Rings. Similar activity can be found hereand here.

[|Track a Sport] Students track the results of various sports during the Olympic games and report on the results. This lesson plan is for language arts, but this could easily be adapted for math. Instead of writing a news report, students can create a graph.

[|Olympic Graphs] Students create graphs comparing present and past winning results (points or times) of various Olympic sports.

[|Olympic Trivia Challenge] Students work in small groups to find fascinating facts about the Summer Olympic Games and Olympic history. This is not really a math activity, but it might be great to use as a launch or to share with another teacher on your team.

Mini-Metric Olympics Students will become familiar with metric units by estimating and measuring in a "Metric Olympic" setting. Look at the preview for ideas. This is a lesson from AIMS that costs $3.00 to purchase...or you might want to harness the power of Google.

[|Olympic Records Through Time] Are we faster, stronger, better than we used to be? Compare the records of gold medal Olympic winners for the last 100 years and decide. Produce a graph/chart which shows performance in a particular event over time. If possible, find an equation which describes the trend in performance. Write/discuss the possible causes for the change. The link may not work, but it just linked to a lesson plan that is described here. Students choose a sport, research it on the Internet, and create a graph.

Olympic Records Give the students 10 graphs showing how Olympic records have changed over time, and ask them to determine which sports they represent. Here are some questions to consider, which may help you to make sense of the graphs:
 * Can you determine what the units might be on the vertical axis for each graph?
 * Why do some graphs show a decreasing trend and some an increasing trend?
 * Are there any unusual features on any of the graphs? Can you think of a plausible explanation for them?

A History of World Records Interactive graphs from the New York Times

How Badly Would Usain Bolt Destroy the Best Sprinter of 1896? Animated interactives comparing the gold medal finishing times or distances in several sports. Not part of a lesson plan, but might be a cool engage activity.

[|Will Women Athletes Ever Catch and Surpass Their Male Counterparts?]
 * Objectives**
 * read, interpret, and reason from graphic representations
 * fit straight lines to data
 * determine the equation of a line
 * determine the point of intersection of two straight lines
 * find the y-value of an equation for a given x-value.

[|Olympics Graph] Graph the medals won by each country.

[|Which Athlete Where?] Logic puzzle - downloadable pdf

[|Roman Numerals - The Secret Code] Downloadable pdf

[|Olympic Charts and Data] Analyze US medal data. Downloadable pdf.