Recommended age group: 7–11
Time required: one or two 45–60 minutes sessions, independent learning time
Equipment: Get Set to Discover Rio information sheet, computer for research and to create a presentation (optional).
If you would like the children to consider in greater depth how good teams work, before they begin their own team challenge, work through the ideas in the ‘What makes an effective team?’ lesson and complete the ‘What makes an effective team?’ activity sheet.
Before putting the children into teams for this task, look at the assembly slides which contain useful background information, which you could use as a whole class stimulus.
Divide the children into teams. Give each team a copy of the ‘Get Set to discover Rio’ activity sheets and talk through the information as a class. The children can use these sheets as the basis for their presentation if they wish. Alternatively, they can carry out their own research using the sites below.
Team members/ pairs of children can take responsibility for finding and recording information on different aspects of the final presentation.
Areas for investigation and inclusion in the presentation could include:
- A map showing the positions of South America, Brazil and Rio along with some basic information about the size of Brazil and/or three or four facts about Rio and some of the other Brazilian cities that hosted events during the 2016 Games.
- The climate of Brazil – how hot is it normally in the summer/ was it during the Rio 2016 Games?
- The names / recipes of some favourite Brazilian foods and drinks.
- Three or four interesting historical facts, key dates or stories.
- Learning a few words of Portuguese, e.g. simple greetings and the Olympic and Paralympic Values words.
- Some amazing facts about the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Each team works collaboratively to decide how they would like to present the information they have found and to whom they will make their presentation, e.g. other classes in the school, a Year/Key stage assembly or a shared assembly to which you could invite parents, community members and governors.
They may want to redraft/redraw/edit their final content before giving the presentation to their chosen audience.
- With younger or less able children you may want to allocate short, specific one-off tasks such as locating and plotting Brazil / Rio on a map or learning the Values words in Portuguese and then help them to put their outcomes together.
- Older or more able children will be able and willing to take on more of the responsibility themselves, deciding on and allocating team roles and researching, planning and preparing their presentation more independently. Team roles could include project managers (to co-ordinate the presentation) creative designers (co-ordinating the format and look and feel of the presentation) researchers and presenters.
- In teams, prepare some Brazilian food, find some Brazilian music, wear something yellow and green and have a Rio class party to celebrate the end of term or a special event! You could invite some special guests to share in the fun.
- Display the Values words in English and Portuguese somewhere prominent in school – do you have any pupils who have Portuguese as their home language who could teach the children some simple words and phrases?