Background+Information

= Background Information =  The idea to do this action research was cemented for me in early October of this school year. It was my first year teaching in the Late Immersion program at this school and I was, albeit it somewhat naïve, assuming that the students, and more specifically social interactions, I would encounter would be the same as in the Early Immersion program. One week, while I was doing supervision on the grass field, a fellow teacher came up to and said, "Isn't it interesting how the grade 7s are all playing touch football, yet they are playing side-by-side, with early immersions using half the field and the late immersion students the other?" I looked at the field, he was right. I was so intrigued that I took a picture of this occurrence. EarlyImmersion Football Game (left) Late Immersion Football Game (right)

Ideally, the Late Immersion students, who are new to our school, will become more acclimatized and take their own initiative to begin to interact more with the student body and vice versa. I wanted to see if I could speed up this process by making slight alterations to our lunchtime intramural program, placing a stronger focus on inclusion and social interactions. In October, the first intramural sport commenced at our school. It was indoor soccer and was selected by the teachers. The teachers, myself included, also chose the teams, developed the schedule, refereed the matches and took care of scorekeeping. Here is a look at the participation for both Early and Late French Immersion students at our school.  This baseline data did not show us the staggering difference between participation levels of the Early Immersion students (31%) as compared to the Late Immersion students(43%). In fact, it somewhat countered what I was saying as the participation rate was actually slightly higher for the Late Immersion students. What I took from these results was that the intramural program was not effectively reaching the majority of the student body. In order to see change, I wanted to be able to look at a broader range of participants. HOME