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Want some ideas about how to bring the Olympics into your lessons? ACHPER has you covered!

The Olympic Games embody many aspects of physical activity, health, achievement, and personal growth. For schools, it presents a great opportunity for reinforcing the learning that has been happening in PDHPE throughout the year.

Want some ideas about how to bring the Olympics into your lessons? ACHPER has you covered!

Thanks to ACHPER NSW Professional Learning Officer, Janice Atkin for originally sharing this piece. 

The Tokyo Olympic Games are here. The Games are one the best sporting spectacles in the world, and many of us will be watching day and night. The Games embody many aspects of physical activity, health, achievement, and personal growth. For schools, it presents a great opportunity for reinforcing the learning that has been happening in PDHPE throughout the year.

The Olympics provide a great opportunity to reinforce learning about fair play, dedication and perseverance, training principles and methods, focus on particular sports and the movement skills and strategies associated with those sports, historical and cultural significance of sport to Australia and other cultures around the world.

Over and above that, the Games are a chance to have fun and get behind our Australian athletes.

The essentials
Ideas for engaging your students

Talk about it

The Games are full of inspiring moments and stories – where sportsmanship, teamwork, resilience, courage, friendship, being your best, respect and many other themes come alive.  These are all great for daily discussion with students and a way to bring the curriculum to life. 

Try these prompts to get your students talking about the Olympics:

  • Imagine that you could interview your favourite Olympic athlete. What questions would you ask them?
  • Imagine that you are a competitor at the Olympics. What do you think your daily routine in the athlete’s village and competing would look like? How do you think it is different at these Olympics to other Olympics as a result of COVID restrictions?
  • Present an argument for the inclusion of a sport that isn’t currently part of the Olympics competition
  • Debate as a class whether professional athletes should be able to compete at the Olympics or should it only be a competition for amateur athletes.
  • Debate whether all athletes are competing on a level playing field at the Olympics. Topics discussed could include performance enhancing drugs, use of technologically advanced equipment, access to advanced training facilities and techniques, access to sponsorship.

Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) school resources

The AOC website has great ideas and resources for schools. We’ve picked some of the best, see below:

Paralympics school resources

The Olympic action continues at the Tokyo Paralympics taking place from 25 August to 5 September! Lots of great Paralympic education resources linked to the curriculum have been put together by Paralympics Australia for teachers and students – a fantastic way for teachers to extend messages of inclusion as well.

Visit the website to find resources:

  • For teachers – free and flexible resources for teachers including lesson plans and units of work linked to the Australian Curriculum
  • For students – help the Paralympic Team get set to soar at Tokyo 2020
  • Paralympians in schools – school visit program aims to challenge learners’ perceptions and attitudes towards people with an impairment by inviting Paralympians into schools around Australia and teaching students about the Paralympic Games and Parasports, thereby helping to increase inclusion through Para-sport.
  • Virtual classrooms – bring athlete ambassadors into your classroom via livestream as they get ready to perform their best at the Tokyo Games
If you need further support to deliver quality HPE at this time, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
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