If your students love sport, an Olympics themed lesson could be a great way to engage them in class! We spoke to five teachers who used the Abridge Academy FREE Olympics themed lessons with their ESL students to hear their insights and top tips on how to bring the Olympic games into the classroom.
Engage students in extended discussion and debate
For intermediate to advanced students, Abridge Academy offers two FREE debating lessons – developing advanced discussion and analytical thinking skills.
Teacher Grant from the USA taught this Olympics themed intermediate level debating lesson with one of his 12-year-old Vietnamese students.
This lesson focuses on using more complex sentences with conjunctives and conjunctive adverbs (however, although and actually) to create counter-arguments.
He says: “My student loved the Olympics debate lesson – she is definitely a tough one to challenge and this really helped her think out of the box. I wanted something she could relate to and something that could get her to think on her own.”
Grant’s main focus is on developing students’ advanced speaking skills and confidence. He added: “I think the questions really helped expand her answer; and I asked follow up questions too.”
Use real data and statistics
Ivy from SuperTeacher was also a big fan of the Olympics debating lessons, particularly the more advanced slides – citing it’s benefits for developing more advanced skills while applying to real-life applications.
She said: “I LOVE linking the lesson to actual articles and data – it works perfectly well translating their debating and overall language skills into real life context and practice! The supporting material in the Abridge Academy debating classes is also great to boost students’ confidence prior to class.”
Teach sports vocabulary through games
Angi teaches a younger age range of online ESL students via Outschool. They loved learning new Olympics themed vocabulary in this A1 level Summer Olympic Sports lesson.
“I used the Summer Olympics lesson today with one student, aged 9. I like that it is a current event. She found it interesting learning about the different sports and she liked playing the game at the end.”
Encourage students to share their own interests
Another teacher, Kimberly, also taught the Summer Olympics lesson to a group of eight students – saying “They loved it! It was fabulous to discuss the events they had been watching, etc. One surprised me by telling me his school has a sailing team!”
Abridge Academy also has a lesson on winter Olympic sports, which teacher Claire loved! She said “The Olympic lessons were a huge hit with both my older and younger students.
“It was great to discuss how China was doing and how many medals had been achieved in different events. The lessons sparked great conversation and allowed my students to express their favourite events whilst learning about events that they were unfamiliar with. Overall the Olympic lessons were so much fun!”
Enjoy five FREE Olympics themed lessons with your students!
To celebrate the Olympics, Abridge Academy has created some fantastic, interactive teaching materials with a fun Olympics theme for online ESL teachers. Even better – they’re totally FREE! Just sign up for the free tier today then check out these five free Olympics themed English lessons for your online classes.
FREE debate (advanced): The Olympics is a waste of money
FREE Debate (intermediate): The Olympics is a waste of money
FREE Olympics: Summer Olympic Sports
FREE Olympics: Inspirational athletes