While the Olympics are taking place in Turin, Italy, students in Madison Elementary teacher Christina Teevan's class are learning about the academics and athleticism behind the Games.

As part of her student teaching unit for Purdue University, student teacher Gail Rathbun is providing the students with history, math and writing lessons on the centuries-old games. But it's not all classwork - during gym, physical education teacher Greg Burgher will have the students involved in everything from hockey to dodgeball.

Opening ceremonies for the class' Olympic unit is Monday, with a closing ceremony planned at the end of the unit. Both ceremonies were planned by the students. The flags for the ceremonies were completed this week and include the flags from the U.S., Greece, Germany and Italy.

During the unit, Rathbun said a newspaper company is providing the class with daily Olympic coverage stories. Incorp-orating math into the unit, students will learn about mean, median and mode and how they are used to compile statis- tics. The computer lab will be used by the students to gather data on the Olympics, and the science behind the sports will be studied.

By the time the unit is finished, Rathbun said each of the students will write their own Olympic newsletter on what they learned and did during the unit.

"I hope they'll learn about the different attributes athletes will have," said Rathbun, including teamwork and hard work, as well as history, science and math. [[In-content Ad]]