Personal Inquiry Project Introductory Outline

Josh Bouwsema

My Question: How does student involvement in the creation, control, and maintenance of
an intramural program increase student participation throughout the school?

Intramurals can be a very entertaining part of schooling; there are even intramural
programs all the way up to post-secondary. However, there are many issues in creating and
maintaining an intramural program including the time commitment, equipment, set-up, and the
reliance of students to participate. Even in a very athletically emphasized school like Bentley
School, an intramural program that has been introduced in the past and has resulted in very little
participation. I was surprised when I found this out since I always see students in the gym at
lunch hour playing basketball and volleyball.

After working with grade 8 home room teacher Courtney MacMillan, we decided that we
could increase participation in intramurals if the school wide program was organized and run by
the grade 8 class. The grade 8 class is the perfect grade as they will not be intimidating to the
grade ones and will still be able to interact with the grade 12s. Having students run and control
the intramural program not only puts ownership of the program on the students, but if this
program were to continue for several years, the grade 8s will eventually be dealing with grade
12s who have run the program in the past and also feel that ownership. Events in the program
will run for either one or two weeks and will be based on the season of play (i.e. volleyball in
September/October). There are four divisions of grades: grade 1-2, grade 3-5, grade 6-8, and
grade 9-12. In some cases the grades may be playing different sports (i.e. 6-8 and 9-12 play flag
football while 1-2 and 3-5 play capture the flag). Safety will always be emphasized and the
referees will be knowledgeable about the events and safety concerns for each. They will also
have the power to remove players who are being reckless and pose a danger to other students.

The point of this PIP is to increase the participation in school wide intramurals through
the creation and maintenance by the grade 8s (with guidance and supervision along the way by
Courtney and I), including awarding points for each event and a small monthly prize for the class
that is leading after that month. The success of this will be measured by the amount of
participation in intramurals and the continued growth. Each grade will be measured to see which
had the most participation and the least.

The final product will be a template for future teachers to use to create a student run
program. The template will allow the teacher to organize and guide the grade in charge of the
intramural program with little front-load work. The template will include rules for the events,
guidelines for scoring and refereeing, a scoring/class list template for each grade per event, and a
sign-up sheet template for each event.
 As the year goes on, the intramural program may require changes, which I am prepared to
deal with.