Learning Opportunities via the 2018 Winter Olympics

For 16 days, millions of eyes will be glued to televisions watching competitors from around the world compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. While witnessing these athletes compete, this can be a wonderful and fun cross-curricular learning opportunity for students of all ages. Below are a few examples of knowledge that can be gained and skills to be reinforced while viewing these events. Be creative and have fun with it!

MATH

• creating & updating a medal count graph (graphing)
• Finding average of scores/times of competitors (finding mean)
• Finding the percent of female vs male competitors with respect to the overall number of competitors (finding percent)
• What is the South Korean currency? Find the equivalent for the dollar. (money, currency exchange)
• Finding the maximum, minimum, median and mode of event scores/times (landmarks)
• Looking at the schedule of events and calculating how long each will last (elapsed time)
• Logging the amount of time you spend watching the Olympics and converting to minutes, hours, days, seconds (time, time conversion)
• Research the climate of South Korea and calculate the average annual hi/low temperatures, precipitation (column addition, finding the mean)
• Time Zone: Difference in hours between PyeongChang and the city where you live

SOCIAL STUDIES

• Research 5 to 7 participating countries to learn basic demographics- e.g. total population, primary language spoken, largest city, total area (history/geography)
• Find the longitude & latitude of PyeongChang (geographic coordinate system)
• Research major cities and rivers in South Korea (geography)
• What dialect of Korean is spoken in South Korea? (culture)