Comparing the Ancient and Modern Olympics
from Education World®
Subjects: Educational Technology, Language Arts, Social Studies
Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12
Objectives
Students will:
- research the history of the ancient Olympic Games,
- read current news reports and watch TV coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games,
- use a graphic organizer (Venn diagram) to show how history has changed the Games, and
- write a brief essay that compares the Games of today to the Games of the ancient Greeks.
Keywords
ancient, essay, graphic organizer, Greece, Olympic Games, Venn diagram, winter, writing
Materials Needed
- Venn diagram forms
- library and/or Internet resources about the Olympic Games
Procedure
Students can complete this activity in the classroom, the library or media center, or the computer lab.
Provide students with a simple Venn diagram form. If you wish to integrate technology, provide students with Education World's editable Venn diagram (
MS Word, 71K, 1pg.). Copy this diagrma onto a disk so students will have a personal copy. They can type into each of the diagram's three fields, then save their completed diagrams to the disk. When they are finished students can print out their comparative diagrams.
Alternative Venn diagram sources:
In this activity, students work in the library or online to learn about the Olympic Games of ancient and modern times. How are the games similar? How are they different? What do they have in common? Students use a Venn format to create a diagram showing the similarities and differences. The students write information specific to the ancient Olympic Games in Section A of the diagram (the part of the left circle that does not intersect with the other circle). They write information specific to today's games Section B of the diagram (the part of the right circle that does not intersect with the other circle). They write information that is common to both in the area where the two circles intersect/overlap.
Following are some online resources students might use as they learn about the Olympic Games:
- The REAL Story of the Ancient Olympic Games
- The Olympic Festival in Antiquity
- The Ancient Olympics
- Go for the Gold: Olympic Games History: The Rise of the Games
- Go for the Gold: Olympic Games History: Modern Olympics
- The Ancient Olympic Games Virtual Museum
- International Olympic Committee: Olympic Games
- Olympic Games Primer
- From Ancient Greece to Modern-Day Australia (Scholastic)
Assessment
Students use the Venn diagrams as a reference as they write brief essays comparing and contrasting the games of ancient Greece with those of modern times.
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