Sport in Ancient Greece

Olympia ruft – Athen 2004 - Unterrichtsmaterialien für die Sekundarstufe I
Sport in Ancient Greece
1. Look at this list of popular sports in Ancient Greece:
running, wrestling, throwing the discus, throwing the javelin, wearing armour, long jump,
chariot racing, horse racing
Write a story about an athlete who takes part in the Games.
What event are you training for?
What happens at the Games?
2. Mime or dance
Find a special music.
Mime the various sporting actions in slow motion. Discus, javelin and wrestling will be
very effective in slow motion.
Show the reactions of the spectators too.
Put all the mimes together to make an Olympic Games dance to show the rest of the
school.
Olympia ruft – Athen 2004 - Unterrichtsmaterialien für die Sekundarstufe I
The Theatre
When the Greeks built theatres in ancient times they chose a hill and made a level
place for the actors. Then they built seats into the hillside. Thousands of people could sit
there.
Even though it is so big you can hear everything. If someone at the bottom drops a little
stone you can hear it at the top.
Greek actors always wore masks, so that the features could be seen from all over the
theatre. They made them of clay or cloth, sometimes of wood, metal or cork. The
expressions on the masks were exaggerated. The mouths were open and very big. That
helped the actor´s voice to sound loud. The main actors usually stayed on the stage at
the back. Men played the parts of men and women.
The Chorus stood in the circle. They all moved and spoke together. They talked to the
audience about what was going on and what they felt about it. The Chorus did not
always have to play the part of people. Sometimes they had to be birds, wasps or a
crowd of frogs.
The Greeks called serious plays >tragedies< and funny plays >comedies<. Tragic actors
had to move very slowly and smoothly, as if they were in a dance. When they were
speaking they stood still in a fixed position. Greek comedies made fun of the heroes and
the gods.
1. The theatre has been built out of doors. What does this tell us about the weather in
Greece compared with the weather in Germany?
2. Look at the shape of a theatre. Do you think it is a good design or a bad one?
3. Draw or make some Greek theatre masks.
Think about:
- the size of the mask
- how to fix it to your face
- what material to use so that it doesn’t break during a performance
Make a mask to show:
- a Greek monster
- a character who will make the audience laugh
- a character who will make people cry
Pretend you are a Greek playwright.
Find a book with some stories. For example you can choose one told by Aesop, who was
a Greek slave. His stories are called ‘fables’ because they contain a hidden message.
Write some lines for the chorus commenting on what happened. Remember that the
Greek playwrights let the chorus make animal noises.
Use maskets to retell your story.
Try to find a place where seats can be arranged on different levels.
4. Imagine you live in Ancient Greece. Write or talk about a day at the theatre. You can
be an actor or a spectator.
Olympia ruft – Athen 2004 - Unterrichtsmaterialien für die Sekundarstufe I
On the Shoulders of a Giant
By Jeff Chu
Little boys dream big. By the times Dikembe Mutombo turned 9, he knew he wanted to
be a doctor. He would work hard, study abroad and return to Congo to help his
countrymen. Then the son of a schoolmaster grew up and up. And up. And up, to 2.2 m.
Mutombo naturally spent plenty of time on the basketball court as a youth, but he
arrived at Georgetown University on an academic scholarship and with instructions from
his father to return home with an education. He disobeyed.
During Mutombo´s second year at college, legendary coach John Thompson asked him
to play basketball – and launched the career of the big man described by National
Basketball Association coaches and teammates as a ´relentless` player with an
´excellent touch` who ´works his tail off every time he steps onto the floor.`
For all those qualities, Mutombo, 36, the star center for the New Jersey Nets and four –
time NBA Defensive Player of the year, now needs just six-and-a-half seconds on court to
earn the $450 his father used to make in a year. And he is using his four-year $68
million contract to do what his inner doctor would do: he is helping to heal his war-torn
homeland.
The aid Mutombo doles out comes in all different forms. To two nieces and two
nephews, Mutombo offered a home and the opportunity to be educated in the U.S.,
adopting them as his own children. (he and his wife, Rose, also have another son and
daughter.)
For Congo´s national women´s basketball team, he provided equipment and funding
for their trip to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. To Special Olympians, he has donated his
time and energy for clinics and workshops. In support of the Global Polio Eradication
Initiative, Mutombo, who speaks nine languages, including English, French, Spanish and
his native Lingala, has given his voice for a series of public-service announcements,
encouraging millions of Central African parents to immunize their children against the
disease.
And in his hometown, the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, he is building a $14.5 million
hospital, which, when it opens next year, will be the nation´s first new fully equipped
medical facility in nearly 30 years. `Mutombo believes that God has given him this
opportunity to do great things for his country, especially in health care,` says Tom
Keefe, president of the International Medical Equipment Collaborative, a charity that will
help to kit out the hospital once it is built. `This facility will create the most dramatic
change in helath-care delivery, not just in the capital, but in the country and the whole
region.`
Mutombo, whom his Georgtown teammate Alonzo Mourning has described as ´full of
the joy of life,`is eager to share that spirit with a country desperately in need. As one
fundraiser for hospital, Mutombo quoted a modern African proverb to explain why he
has committed so much of his life and his wealth to the welfare of others.
´When you take the elevator up to reach the top, please don´t forget to send the
elevator back down, so that someone else can take it to the top,` he said. `This is my
way of sending the elevator down.´
Olympia ruft – Athen 2004 - Unterrichtsmaterialien für die Sekundarstufe I
TIME, April 28, 2003
Assignment
Study the text and point out what impresses you most of Mutombo.
Describe Mutombo´s attitude towards his sport and his country?
Can you define Mutombo`s principles of life?
What is it that makes Mutombo a real Olympian sportsman?
Literatur
Für das weitere Arbeiten im Fach Englisch sei der vom Nationalen Olympischen
Komitee(NOK) herausgegebene Band Olympism – the Olympic Idea in Modern Society
and Sport mit didaktisch-methodisch aufbereiteten Texten empfohlen.
In der Regel finden sich für den Unterricht sehr geeignete Texte in den Magazinen und
Tagszeitungen TIME, NEWSWEEK, Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, und The
International Herald Tribune.