Olympics Project: Researching Athletes

 We've made some exciting connections with athletes through social media, which has led to further Olympics inquiry.  Once we'd learned about pairs skaters Paige & Rudi, hockey player Hayley Wickenheiser and skeleton racer Mellisa Hollingsworth, we were excited to find out about other athletes.  Our class decided that our Olympics project should include research to learn more about Canadian athletes.  Students helped me design a simple template for organizing our athlete research and we got started!

 Click to download our template from my SkyDrive

Different groups of students were interested in different sports, so we split into interest groups for our research.  Some students wanted to research another hockey player and they were quick to decide on Sidney Crosby as the topic for their inquiry.  Other students were really interested in biathlon, but they had to do some research to find out who the Canadian biathlon athletes were.  A third group was really interested in learning about other figure skaters, since Rudi and Paige were SO interesting!  With teacher/educational assistant/volunteer support, students began researching online and working together to record their understandings.  I'm looking forward to posting their work once their first athlete research projects are ready!