Roll-ympics is a series of dice challenges where students can try to beat the odds and press their luck. Each event is designed to mimic a particular athletic event. You know how I love to teach ancient literature and history. If not, here is some evidence of my love of ancient times. So this idea began with the ancient Greeks–specifically, the Pentathlon, the original “big five” of Olympic events in the ancient Olympic Games: long jump, javelin, wrestling, footracing, and discus. But then, of course, as ideas often do, it expanded to also include a decathlon of modern Olympic events like hurdles, shotput, pole vault, and other favorites for a total of 15 events.
Although you can use digital dice to play the game, I think physical dice are more fun, so I bought a set of dice on Amazon.com for my students to use. The dice were brightly colored and had great weight to them–not to mention, a good deal! Here is the link to the dice I used: https://amzn.to/4iILQjp (Note: This is an Amazon affiliate link.)
Students can play the game individually, as a whole class, or in small groups. (By the way, playing in groups reduces the number of dice you will need!) Each event has a unique goal that is a combination of strategy, risk-taking, and, of course, luck. My students really got into the competition of it all. They were cheering their victories and razzing their opponents. I posted the high scores for each event on the board and crowned a winner for both the Pentathlon and Decathlon. (By the way, if you want a simple leaderboard, you can have a free copy of the Google Sheets one I created by clicking here.) My students had a blast with Roll-ympics! It was voted their #1 game of the semester in our end-of-the-semester survey. (Do you give an end-of-semester survey? See my blog post about why I do.)
So if you think you would be interested in trying Roll-ympics in your own classroom, click the image below to find out more details about the game!