Letter from Marcel Aubut
Dear Educators,
I am pleased to present the Canadian Olympic School Program’s (COSP) London 2012 curriculum. This year’s resources celebrate 24 years of bringing the excitement of the Olympic Games to Canadian classrooms. What began as a school program for the Calgary 1988 Olympic Winter Games, the COSP continues to provide inspiring and engaging resources to teachers and students of all ages.
With the London 2012 Olympic Games just around the corner, Canadian athletes are preparing to take on the World. Medals will be won, personal bests set, and history will be made. Through it all, our Olympians will inspire us with their values and character that make them champions and role models.
As educators, you have the opportunity to use the excitement of the Olympic Games to inspire your students to be their best. You can motivate them to be more active, persevere through challenges and difficult times, believe in themselves, be leaders, and respect diversity. The COSP provides you with the resources to take advantage of these potential learning opportunities.
We are excited to share with you Athletes’ Stories from Jennifer Abel (Diving), Mary Spencer (Boxing) and Simon Whitfield (Triathlon). Exploring the values of leadership, respect, and healthy active living; your students will have the opportunity to exercise their mind, body and character alongside some of our finest athletes. Driven by their values, commitment, and quest for excellence, your students will be inspired by some of our nation’s greatest role models and ambassadors exemplifying these values.
Faced by alarming childhood and youth obesity rates, the COSP wants to work together with Canadian educators to get students moving and as a result, adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles. Through the COSP Challenge, the Summer Sports Day, and the Canadian Olympic School Training Log, we aim to assist you in creating a readiness for change and motivating your students to live more healthy and active lives.
We are releasing three new project packs for secondary students. All three components connect primarily to Language Arts curriculum, and emphasize producing creative Olympic-themed work through oral, digital and written form. Unlike previous years, each of these projects are available comes in both a junior and senior version.
As the media experts begin to focus their attention of Canadians on this summer’s Olympic Games, we hope that you will choose to leverage this excitement to engage your students in dynamic and inspiring Olympic-themed learning.
Sincerely,
Marcel Aubut
Why Olympic Education?
Some teachers wonder why a sport organization such as the Canadian Olympic Committee would invest in an education program. Simply put, the whole modern Olympic Movement sprang out of a philosophy focused on education that still remains a key force in the modern Olympic Games.
The Olympic Movement is no different than any global movement in that it becomes concrete from an establish a set of ideals. In this case, the ideals were based on the educational philosophies of Baron Pierre de Coubertin. He believed that the education of youth should not be bound to books, but should include sport, culture and art. His philosophy, later called Olympism, was the bedrock of the modern Olympic Movement. In 1894, he created the Olympic Movement to advance his philosophies, and in 1896 the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece.
De Coubertin envisioned a marriage between sport and art. Youth of the world (at that time only male youth) would gather for competition in both sport and the arts. In the early years, medals were given for both. This made Olympism’s aims of balancing intellectual, cultural and physical development more evident to all. Although the practice of giving medals for painting and poetry didn’t last long, the philosophy espoused by Olympism is still alive and well today in the Olympic Movement. In fact, Olympism is featured in the Fundamental Principles of Olympic Charter:
Olympism is a philosophy of life; exalting and combining in balanced whole qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example, and respect for universal, fundamental ethical principles. (Source: http://www.olympic.org/ioc)
Olympic education is a key part of each Olympic Games and is given particular focus by the International Olympic Committee. The Olympic Games offers the opportunities for students to explore the values demonstrated by the athletes: fair play, pursuit of excellence, leadership, respect, healthy active living, and perseverance. Children and youth can connect with these values through the athletes, as rich and transformative learning takes place.
The Canadian Olympic School Program Approach
The Canadian Olympic School Program (COSP) seeks to create the excitement of the Olympic Movement in the classroom and throughout the school. The resources are aimed at sparking discussions about values, telling stories that inspire, and encouraging students to work together to find creative solutions to suggested challenges and current issues. Written by teachers, for teachers, the resources are pedagogically sound, classroom friendly and adaptable. Our developers believe that:
- Learning is active and not passive. The learner must interact with the content to make it meaningful. This is one of the main reasons we offer our curriculum at different reading levels.
- Students learn in different ways. Some people learn best by reading; some people learn best by listening; some people learn best by doing.
- Applied learning engages the high school learner. Giving the students a role as they are presented with a challenge to solve is more meaningful than giving them questions to answer.
- Learning can be both an individual and cooperative activity. Young people need opportunities to work together as well as independently. They also need to practice cooperative behaviours in order to learn respectful behaviours.
- Successful learning occurs over time. It occurs through carefully scaffolded series of steps that connect to students’ prior understanding, actively process or practice new information, and finally transform their understandings into powerful demonstrations of learning.
The Canadian Olympic School Program London 2012 Curriculum
The Canadian Olympic Committee is proud to present 10 new resources for K-12 students. This chart summarizes the resources and provides a guide in planning your Olympic Education for the spring.
| Resource | Grades | Subject(s) | Description | Special Features |
| Athlete Story: Jennifer Abel, Leadership | 2-7 | Language Arts Comprehensive School Health | Outstanding leaders lead by example. Jennifer Abel, a Montreal-based Olympic diver, leads younger athletes as a role model for consistent and hard training. | Each story is written at 3 reading levels, enabling teachers to easily adapt the activities to students of multiple reading and achievement levels |
| Athlete Story: Mary Spencer, Respect | 2-7 | Language Arts Comprehensive School Health | Boxing is the only summer sport to exclude women, but all of that will change at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Fighting for respect and equality for years, Mary Spencer, reigning World Champion, will finally get the chance to go for Gold and earn respect only given to those who can say they are Olympians. | Each story is written at 3 reading levels, enabling teachers to easily adapt the activities to students of multiple reading and achievement levels |
| Athlete Story: Simon Whitfield, Healthy Active Living | 2-7 | Language Arts Comprehensive School Health | Few athletes can inspire young people to live healthy active lives like Simon Whitfield. Students learn about Simon’s comeback at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, and how a return to having fun helped him earn a silver medal. | Each story is written at 3 reading levels, enabling teachers to easily adapt the activities to students of multiple reading and achievement levels |
| COSP Challenge | 2-7 | Language Arts Social Responsibility Physical Education Daily | Inspire students to achieve their personal best through the Personal Best Challenges. Challenges feature Canadian Olympic Team members and focus on the values discussed in the Athletes’ stories. | Upon completing the COSP Challenge students receive a congratulatory letter from either Simon Whitfield, Mary Spencer or Jennifer Abel. |
| COSP Challenge | 2-7 | Language Arts Social Responsibility Physical Education Daily | Inspire students to achieve their personal best through the Personal Best Challenges. Challenges feature Canadian Olympic Team members and focus on the values discussed in the Athletes’ stories. | Upon completing the COSP Challenge students receive a congratulatory letter from either Simon Whitfield, Mary Spencer or Jennifer Abel. |
| Canadian Youth 2012 Cultural Olympiad | 7-9 (J)10-12 (S) | Language Arts Media Arts Social Studies | Students develop a submission to the digital Canadian Youth 2012 Cultural Olympiad that will proudly present their community’s art, culture, architecture, and people to youth around the World. | Includes articles, project description, project planning handouts, teaching tips, and evaluation rubric. The supporting article is written for two reading levels. |
| Destination London | 7-9 (J)10-12 (S) | Language Arts Social Studies | Students will design and promote the ultimate youth travel package to the London 2012 Olympic Games. Students use their research and presenting skills to design a travel brochure (junior) or video/presentation (senior). | Includes articles, project description, project planning handouts, teaching tips, and evaluation rubric. The supporting article is written for two reading levels. |
| Media Campaign | 7-9 (J)10-12 (S) | Language Arts Media | Using an understanding of traditional and new media, students will develop a media campaign to promote the London 2012 Olympic Games that features both past and current Canadian Olympians. | Includes articles, project description, project planning handouts, teaching tips, and evaluation rubric. The supporting article is written for two reading levels. |
| Summer Sports Day | K-9 | Physical Education | Host an Olympic-themed school sports day using modified Olympic sport activities. All the instructions are included to make your sport day a success. | |
| Training Log | 7-12 | Physical Education Sports teams Daily Physical Activity | Students can track their exercise and training, learning about sports medicine, psychology, performance dietician, and injury prevention along the way. Be inspired by the contributions from Canadian athletes and Olympic Team Staff. | Teacher’s guide with expert tips from the athletes and support staff of the Canadian Olympic Team. |
Teaching Tips
Beginning in the spring, the media will begin to cast their attention on Canadian athletes competing at London 2012 Olympic Games. There will be a buzz among your students as learn more about the Olympic Games and adopt these values. Here are a few tips to make this a memorable learning experience:
- Ask the students to brainstorm what they remember from the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Inquire what they know about the Olympic Movement.
- Explain the history of the ancient Olympic Games. Some teachers have their students do some research to find out about the origins of the modern Games.
- Review the archived resources from previous Olympic Games available through COSP’s library at www.olympic.ca/education
- Decorate your classroom for the Olympic Games with Canadian flags and maple leafs.
- Research what the organizers of the London 2012 Olympic Games are planning for this summer. Check out the excitement at http://www.london2012.com/.
- The organizers of the London 2012 Olympic Games have also produced an education program. It can be accessed at http://getset.london2012.com/en/home.
- Consider team teaching your Olympic education unit. Students often enjoy doing activities with children from other classes. Mix things up by working with different grades. Also enjoy sharing your ideas with colleagues within your school.
- Emphasize that there is a great variety of professions that are involved in hosting the Olympic Games and fielding a successful Olympic team. Brainstorm the different professions that will participate in making the London 2012 Games a success (A suggested tip may include: professionals such as plumber, librarian, sport journalist, musician and coach).