King George School is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 public French immersion

French immersion

French immersion is a form of bilingual education in which a child who does not speak French as his or her first language receives instruction in school in French...

 elementary school in Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

. It is operated by the Calgary Board of Education

Calgary Board of Education

The Calgary Board of Education is the public school board in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. As a public system, the CBE is required to accept any students who meet age and residency requirements, regardless of religion.-Size:...

 (CBE).

Shared building

The school offers many programs and activities, with many theme days all chosen by class representatives, who meet every month to discuss current school issues. Representatives bring up topics discussed from their homeroom class, to listen and take action the suggestions of the students. TLC offers a special character education program, which features virtues that the school encourages students to take into their daily lives by. Each month a different virtue is selected, and a special half-period is spent each day before lunch ('Character Circle') to discuss that, doing activities as well fitting with the course.

However, next year, the TLC program has been decided and finalized to move out of the King George building, and into Balmoral School - at last having its own independent building to reside in.

It now carries the Mandarin project from Langevin.

History

The school name was selected to honor the 1910 coronation of George V of the United Kingdom

George V of the United Kingdom

George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....

. The school was built in 1912, and was opened in 1913. As was typical of the time in Calgary, the original structure was made from sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

.

From then until 1988 it operated as a regular English language school, for the nearby community (teaching grades K-9 before the end point). However, as young families moved to outer lying areas in the city, enrollment tapered off, and there was progressively more bussing of students from newer communities that didn't have their own school yet.

In September 1987 the school became a dual-track English and French immersion elementary school. In 2002, continued declining enrollment, meant the school was turned into a single-track French immersion program.

French immersion

French immersion is generally for students from English language families, who wish their children to speak French fluently. The primary language of instruction in most courses is French, although English is taught as a separate course. Students are expected to be, or become, fluent in both languages. French speaking families who wish their children to have a fully French education, will often prefer instead to go to a school run by the French language school district instead (as opposed to the CBE which is English).

External links

• School profile at Calgary Board of Education
• Historical photo - This is a photo published in the (then) Calgary Daily Herald
  Calgary Herald
  The Calgary Herald is a daily newspaper published in the Canadian city of Calgary, Alberta.- History :The paper was first published on August 31, 1883 by Andrew Armour and Thomas Braden as The Calgary Herald, Mining and Ranche Advocate and General Advertiser. It started as a weekly paper with only...
  
  from June 29, 1926.