With the summer games occurring this August, why not start incorporating the theme into your classroom now? It would be something fun, something different, something of interest to many of your students (and you!), plus get them excited about watching this summer. Below are some simple ways you can incorporate related themes into what you are already doing!
Idioms are hard for students to grasp and sometimes just have to be explicitly taught. Once learned, your students will get a kick out of them. I had no idea that there were so many sports related idioms. Check out this list from Wikipedia. Apparently so many are derived from baseball that it gets its own list here. I made a triple match idiom FREEBIE for you using a few! This activity contains 18 different idioms with sentences and definitions to match each. Grab it by clicking on the images below.
Below are some read alouds about summer sports. Click on any of the images to find them on Amazon.








When I taught second grade, we did a huge research project during the last six weeks. It was always on animals so the science standards could be covered at the same time. But, if you aren't tied to something else, having students research a sport or a famous athlete would be a great thing to do instead this year. Here is a list of all the summer games that will be include this year. Here, here, and here are some lists of great athletes if you need some ideas (all subjective of course).
Use sports related nonfiction texts to teach about text features. This will be especially useful if you are having students do research since many of the nonfiction books are about several sports or are very long. Students will need to know how to use the table of contents, headings, and index to find information as well as how to read captions, diagrams, charts, etc.


It is difficult to find books about less common sports, but National Geographic and Sports Illustrated both have series of books for the most popular ones.
Most biographies can be used to teach nonfiction text features as well. Above are a couple of series that have some athletes included.

Many sports have lots of similarities and differences. Having students compare a new sport to one they are already familiar with would be a great way to learn some new information and focus on details. Here are some examples and a Venn diagram your students can use.
- basketball/handball
- judo/taekwondo
- rugby/football
- table tennis/tennis
- badminton/tennis
- archery/shooting
- track cycling/road cycling
- field hockey/ice hockey
- decathlon/triathlon
- shot put/hammer throw
- sailing/canoeing
- wrestling/boxing


All of the graphic organizers shown above are available for free on TpT by clicking the image below.
Making inferences is a skill that students need constant practice with. Sports are great for this because they do have some background knowledge they can use along with new information to figure things out. I recently finished a new product that contains FORTY task cards each with a paragraph about a different summer sport and a question that requires making an inference. I also made three different graphic organizers that can be used (and you can get for free here). Find the product by clicking on the images. I learned so much writing these, I know you and your students will too!
To download a FREE SAMPLE of this product (four paragraphs and three graphic organizers) simply click on the image below and you will find it in Google Docs.
If one of your standards is to have students WRITE procedural texts, or EXPLAIN a procedure have them choose a sport and tell or write how to play it! I've written a post in the past with procedural text resources. This template below is a freebie from that post. Just click on one of the images to download it.
Action words are great for teaching shades of meaning and checking for understanding because you can have students physically show you what the words mean! Go outside and give your students words that have similar, but different, meanings. Have them perform the actions and determine the differences in the words. Here are a few examples:
- jog - run - sprint
- hop - jump - leap
- toss - throw - hurl
- bump - hit -whack
- catch - grab - snatch
Sports are perfect for reviewing nouns and verbs! Find and cut out photographs of athletes and sporting events from newspapers, magazines, or just print them from the internet. Have students glue one on a piece of paper and have them list all the nouns and verbs related to the photo. Add in the adverbs and adjectives if your students can handle it. They could then use these words to write a descriptive paragraph about the photo. Very simple, no prep activity. All you need is photos and paper.
I hope that you have found a few activities that you can use as you finish up your year or even in summer school.
Pin for Later:
This is PERFECT for summer school, where one week of themes will be the Summer Games. Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteAndrea
Reading Toward the Stars
Thank you for sharing these wonderful ideas. Your organizers and activities are awesome!
ReplyDeleteMary
Elementary Engagement
W.O.W. Such great book recommendations and ideas here. I kinda wish I was teaching summer school this year! I pinned this post!
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