It’s an Olympic Year

Paris will officially welcome the world to the Olympic Games in summer 2024 for the third time.

The Paris games will see the debut of a new sport – ‘breaking’. Breaking is competitive breakdancing, renowned for its athletic moves, spins and holds. When judging breaking, the panel will be looking for creativity, style, skill, strength, speed and rhythm. Sport climbing and skateboarding will also debut.

The surfing events will be held in Tahiti, French Polynesia, an overseas collective of France, breaking the record for the farthest Olympic medal event to be held outside of the host city. International Olympic Committee President, Thomas Bach, said this will make the Olympic Games “more gender-balanced, more youthful and more urban.”

The Olympics are a chance for school children everywhere to celebrate, learn and join in. It’s a fantastic opportunity for teachers and home educators to think about the learning opportunities across the curriculum. As ever, the resources are wide ranging and freely available Resources | Generation 2024 and demonstrate the multiple ways that your school or setting can be involved: School Bag – Teachers | Generation 2024.

Here are some of my favourites:

• Meet the Mascots – The Mascots of Paris 2024 – poses, sports and attitudes | Generation 2024
• Athlete Top Trumps – Athlete Cards | Generation 2024
• An Olympic escape room – Mission Inclusion Escape Game – High School | Generation 2024
• A surfing quiz based on protecting life under water – Surf Quiz & Nature Protection | Generation 2024 
• Goal Ball lesson plan – Goalball – Teacher Lesson Plan | Generation 2024

The ambition behind the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the focus of Generation 24 is the wellbeing of young people and their development as citizens. Paris 2024 wants sport values to become a key part of people’s lives and to prove that we can achieve excellence while also championing sustainability.

One challenge has been the language barrier but I’ve found a number of ways to work round that, and work with children direct with French Olympic Games resources:

• Visit translate.google.com, enter the website of the French website, select French to English, and click on the translated link that appears.
• Google Chrome automatically offers to translate pages detected in another language. Alternatively, right-click the page and select “Translate to English”.
• With Microsoft Edge click the translation icon in the address bar when visiting a foreign-language website.

Bonne chance, and enjoy the Games!

Emma Whewell

Emma is the Deputy Head of Subject for Sport and Exercise, a PE teacher and an Associate Professor of Learning and Teaching at the University of Northampton.