CHESAPEAKE

- Winter is coming, and when Principal Jack Finch has to decide if he is going to call a snow day. This year, he may have a little help.

Chesapeake Elementary School recently, through a partnership with American Electric Power, installed a state-of-the-art weather station for students to gain and utilize knowledge about the weather by using a &#8220hands on” approach to science.

&#8220The important thing is that kids can actually know the weather on the campus site, it has everything except Doppler radar,” Principal Jack Finch said. &#8220Research shows that 90 percent of learning takes place when you are engaged or involved in the activity and kids need to discover as opposed to having the application set before them.”

Finch said AEP employee Jerry Osbourne set the 30-foot post and built the platform the station goes on and helped purchase a 30-inch monitor for students to watch the weather in the technology lab.

&#8220To tell is one thing, but to have a hands-on usage really benefits the children,” Finch said.

The school is developing an outdoor math and science lab which will incorporate some of the lessons, Finch said. The lab will include a pond, a walking trail and things to measure and calculate and bird sanctuary.

Finch said the lab is going to be a great place for the students, though it will take a couple of years to complete. One of the first and most expensive items for the lab was the weather station.

Students in Linda Long's fourth-grade class have been taking advantage of the new weather station. They have been learning about different aspects of weather including forms of precipitation, the water cycle, greenhouse effect, types of clouds and how to read weather maps.

&#8220It is not enough that they know what they are, they have to know how to use them,” Long said, adding her students spent two weeks going to the weather station every morning and recording data which they are graphing in the classroom. The students can also make their own graphs at the weather station on things such as humidity and temperature.

&#8220It is a lot of information and they did well with it,” Long said. &#8220They make graphs to critically think, they have to rely on fact not opinion.”

Long has also taught her students some important lessons about the science of weather including how it affects them and why they need to know about the weather. Most important, has been weather safety such as where the safest place to be in a storm is and what to do in the event of a tornado.

Some of her students said they have enjoyed this method of learning about the weather. Samantha Petrie said she learned a lot.

&#8220I liked to learn about the clouds and the shapes they are,” she said. &#8220I liked it a whole lot; it was fun.”

&#8220My favorite thing about the weather is learning about different cloud types,” Haley Slinker said.

The students will continue to learn by using the weather station. And who knows, when that big snow storm of the season comes, they may know school will be out before their parents do.

&#8220What we have now is far superior to what I could have imagined,” Long said. &#8220It is a very visual thing for them to understand the weather.