Konrad Morgan Lehmann

03/09/22

Researching Sports in Younger Years

For my senior project, I would like to explore the role of sports in the lower and middle schools of LREI. There are three facets that this project will include; conducting a research study, volunteering myself in the PE and recess activities of the school, and ultimately filming a documentary with the students and teachers voicing their opinions. The study will mainly be guided by my research question: What gets lower and middle school students engaged and interested in the sports at their school? I will also be factoring in age and gender into the research, to find out what different kinds of sports, be it teams sports, or individual, get different kinds of students, of varying genders and ages, involved in sports.

Besides the obvious health benefits of staying physically active, sports can positively affect people of all ages in various ways. Without going into the chemistry behind exercise, sports can greatly benefit your mental health, relieving stress and mental strain. It can prove to be enjoyable for those involved, and can have lasting effects of restful and relaxed moods in the short term, and many more positive effects in the long term. When children of any age are active in sports it exposes a variety of benefits, and this project aims to promote and encourage this by finding out what schools can do to help students find their ideal form of physical activity that suits them.

The way in which I will measure my success has the potential to be broad but also very decisive. It can either directly answer the research question in a summary/research paper, or it can be through the feedback I receive from teachers, depending on if they think the results from this study are in any way helpful or useful to the LREI sports curriculum. I will, however, also aim to complete my documentary on the students’ and teachers’ opinions of sports at LREI so hopefully that is finished and presentable by the senior project share date. I am definitely hopeful that I will meet these goals and be able to present a conclusive and interesting senior project.