Canadian athletes to arrive at Commonwealth Games tomorrow.
A team of 35 Canadians arrived last week at the event’s “athletes’ village” to get things ready for our 40 athletes and coaches, who are flying in today. The first Canadian athletes to arrive will be those in women’s gymnastics, shooting, table tennis and men’s field hockey.
There has been some controversy surrounding these Games. Some countries have been complained about health and safety concerns. For instance, the athletes’ village was dirty and dilapidated in some areas, and there were pools of water near the athletes’ residence where disease-carrying mosquitoes could potentially breed.
The president of the Commonwealth Games Federation, Mike Fennell, rushed to India to look over the situation and ensure that improvements were made. Many of the problems, including the pools of water, have now been cleaned up, and the first athletes – the English hockey and lawn bowling teams – arrived in New Delhi last week.
Their arrival helped to ease concerns and New Zealand and Australia, the countries that have been the city’s harshest critics, have now confirmed that they will attend the Games.
The Commonwealth Games are held every four years and feature many Olympic sports as well as sports (for instance, netball, lawn bowls and rugby sevens) that are played in Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth of Nations, previously known as the British Commonwealth, includes 54 member states, all but two of which were previously part of the British Empire.
Related links
The website for the Commonwealth Games.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
Writing/Discussion Prompt
If you were a professional athlete, invited to participate at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, would you go? What would your reasoning be?
Reading Prompt
Authors often include adjectives (describing words) in their writing in order to paint a picture in the minds of the readers. Identify all of the adjectives in the article and discuss how they help you to understand the story more easily.
Primary
Identify some simple elements of style, including voice and word choice, and explain, initially with support and direction, how they help readers understand texts (OME, Reading: 2.4).
Junior
Identify various elements of style – including alliteration, descriptive adjectives and adverbs, and sentences of different types, lengths, and structures – and explain how they help communicate meaning (OME, Reading: 2.4).
Grammar Feature: Apostrophe
Highlight the different uses of the apostrophe throughout the article.
“A team of 35 Canadians arrived last week at the event’s “athletes’ village” to get things ready for our 40 athletes and coaches, who are flying in today.”
