LC – BODY Evolution of the Olympic Game events since antiquity

First, the 4th graders analyzed documents with their history teacher: texts and images presenting the origins, locations, operations and political stakes of the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece. This work led them to discuss the values put forward by the Greeks at that time, and to compare them with those of today's Olympic Games: are these values still invoked, which ones have disappeared and why, and what are the new ones?

To conclude, they created a mind map of the ancient Olympic Games.

They then worked on the different sporting disciplines present in Ancient Greece, and then compared them with those officially selected for the Paris 2024 Olympics. The students produced a summary slide show

The rest of the activity was taken up by the other Erasmus group, the 5th graders. They worked on the linguistic part, doing activities around the origins of certain words and expressions in contemporary everyday language, taken from the vocabulary of the Olympic Games in Greek antiquity: "ex aequo, pentathlon, gymnasium, athlete, hippodrome, podium".

They worked on etymologies (with dictionaries), on the polysemy of expressions, discovering their original meaning linked to ancient games, for example: "Herculean strength, an Achilles heel, a laureate, a pugilism", or "passing the torch, throwing in the towel, etc..";

All this work led to a final activity: working together on a quiz to assess this new knowledge, and then sharing it with as many classmates as possible in the school. Groups of students divided up the topics to be covered in the quiz, and made the questions and answers.