Citations for individual images are available after clicking on the individual images.
Sports literature is a popular focus for high school English electives and for units in other grades. In courses in which students choose their own sports literature to read, it is advisable to define what sport is and to expand thinking about who qualifies as being an athlete.
Athletic skill and talent are essential in many physical sports, games, and artistic performances. This selection of rights-free pictures highlights athletes in more than forty different professional and recreational activities. All pictures are from the Prints & Photographs Division unless otherwise credited.
These are photographs, posters, magazine covers, paintings, drawings, and woodcuts that depict athletes doing different sports over time. Most of the sports are familiar and popular, but some are more obscure. By looking at these images as a group, we can see how athletes vary and we can see a wide variety of activities that are, or once were, considered sports.
- What are all the sports you see depicted in this collection?
- What is the oldest image you see in this collection?
- What is the most recent image you see in this collection?
- What are some of the demographics you see depicted in this collection?
- Is there any common trait you see in the images in this collection?
- Which of these activities do you have an interest in reading more about?
Alaska ELA standards Grades 9–12
Writing: Text Types and Purposes: 1. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
- When students compose a definition of “sport” or “athlete,” their definition must stand up to scrutiny, and they must present their reasoning and evidence.
Writing: Text Types and Purposes: 8. Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the usefulness of each source in answering the research question.
- When students look for more information or reading options about these sports, they will use print and digital sources and search tools to find them.
- What makes an activity a sport rather than a pastime? What sports have been popular in the past but are not popular now? By going through the focus questions above, students can gain a broader perspective on sports: who plays them, what sports are or have been, and what sports might be of interest for research topics or further reading.
- After looking through this collection, students can work in groups to create a definition of what constitutes a sport or what constitutes an athlete. What makes an activity NOT a sport?
- Students can then do research to find resources that would allow further reading on some of these sports. This can lead to a lesson in search techniques, reliable sources, and how to use library search tools to find reading material of interest. This work can build up to a formal research project.
- There might be some families who feel that reading and researching about sports might not be a good use of time.
- For those families, there is also an excellent Library of Congress Free to Use and Reuse collection about Work in America that can be used for similar purposes.
- Women Quilting in America is a resource that students can make an intergenerational connection with.
- Miller, Sadie, Mabel Miller Brown, Margie Miller, Jenny Miller Bonds, Nancy Miller Jarrell, and Lyntha Scott Eiler. Group of women working on a windmill quilt at a quilting bee in the living room of Mabel Brown’s home on Drews Creek. Raleigh County Brown Hollow, Drews Creek, West Virginia, 1995. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/cmns000048/.
- A woman working in tech is an image that features Americans in the workforce. Concentrating on women may help show students a more diversified workforce.
- DeNatale, Douglas, and Tom Rankin. Wang Laboratories Assembly Plant, Pawtucket Blvd., Lowell, Massachusetts. United States Massachusetts Lowell, 1988. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1987042_tr_c087/.