O-Lot of Olympics - Monday Made It

My class has caught Olympic Fever!

About two weeks ago I introduced my students to the Team USA website (www.teamusa.org), and the students researched an athlete to create pages for a class guidebook.

My third graders were familiar with some of the athletes already because of the ads that have been on T.V.  It was funny that they knew Ted Ligety more for his cold medicine commerical than for his achievements in skiing!

This is the fact sheet students completed while researching an athlete.
Now that the Olympics has started we are tracking the number of  male and female athletes that have won medals.  My students are especially interested in the athletes that they had researched.  Some are even familiar with the athletes that their classmates researched. 
I hear comments like, "Sarah's guy won a medal!"

We also printed pictures of selected of athletes along with their names and events, and posted them in the hallway to spread excitement for the games.
The hallway banner and guidebook are part of the Olympic product I created.

My students are also doing independent study projects about an athlete of their choice.
Four years ago I had my students do independent projects about a current or former athlete, and they turned out great.
Most students mentioned how hard these athletes had worked and trained to qualify for the Olympics.
These are some examples of projects:

You can find this product in my TpT or TN store through the highlighted links.

My teaching partner and I discovered that the Reading A-Z site has some great resources for reading about the Olympics.

Sorry - it's a bit blurry but hopefully you can see there are many options to choose from.
They have leveled passages about the same athlete for three different reading levels.
We have a school membership to Reading A-Z.
Here's another sample page from this site about the Olympic mascots.

Check out Reading A-Z here.

 This is not a new idea - I saw it on Pinterest over a year ago (and please tell me if this your original awesome idea), and I'm sure many of you do the same thing but still thought I'd share.
It's so much better for my students to have a bookmark in their Reading Response Journals.  We certainly find our current spot much more quickly at this time of year.
I used some chevron ribbon I had left over from another project to make these.

Simply tape the ribbon to the inside of the back cover (I used heavy duty packing tape), and wrap tape around the edge of the ribbon to avoid fraying.

I am certainly inspired by all the great ideas on Tara's Monday Made It.
Check them out on her blog!