Olympic Starters

This is the start of the $100$ metres in $1896$. In that year Thomas Burke from the USA won the race in $12$ seconds.

I wonder how far you could run in $12$ seconds.

You and your friends could use a stop watch and then measure how far you ran.

This is the finish of the $200$ metres in $1924$. Jackson Scholz from USA won that race in just over $21$ seconds.

I wonder if you could run the $100$ metres in that time?

Or you could see how far you could run in $22$ seconds.

This is the high jump in $1906$. It shows Ray Ewry from the United States.

He jumped $1$ metre $56$ centimetres.

How high can you jump?

See how high $1$ metre $56$ centimetres is.

Can you find someone who can jump that high?

This is the triple jump, which is a hop, step and a jump.

In $1906$ it was Peter O'Connor from Ireland who won a silver medal.

He jumped about $15$ metres

What's your best hop, step and a jump?

Photograph acknowledgements

Why do this activity?

This activity looks at some historic Olympic results and asks children to think about whether they could do something similar. It introduces ideas about measuring time and distances in standard units.

Possible approach

Talk to the class about the Olympic Games and their history both in modern and ancient times. Talk about the ideas of winning and competition. Get them to try the tasks themselves and look at ways of collecting the information about what they do.

Key questions

Possible extension

Children could move on to timing each other as they do different tasks and create their own sports competitions deciding on rules for winning.

Possible support

Some children will need a lot of help to measure lengths and times accurately. Using them in a real context can help them to understand the meanings of the numbers on the tapes and on the clock.