UPDATE: WCS preparing students for the April 8, 2024 Solar Eclipse with a variety of activities

Warren City Schools will prepare students for the 2024 solar eclipse with a variety of activities centered around the April 8 historic event.

For starters, all students and staff will receive a complimentary pair of eclipse glasses so they can watch the sky safely as the moon passes between the earth and the sun.

Parts of the Mahoning Valley are in the path of totality, with Trumbull County in the direct line of passage.

The district, in anticipation of the solar eclipse, announced school will be dismissed two hours early on Monday, April 8.

But before they leave for the day, students will have a variety of opportunities to learn as much as possible about the eclipse. Activities will vary based on the students’ grade bands/pods.

HERE ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS

Grades 3-8: Students will use ultraviolet beads to discover why we wear eclipse glasses during an eclipse.
Grade K-2: Students will make models of an eclipse to understand the pattern of the moon, earth, and sun.
HIGH SCHOOL GRADE LEVELS: Using the PASCO wireless weather sensor and the SPARKvue app, Suzette Jackson, Warren City Schools Assistant Curriculum Director, Grades 6-12, will gather data during the eclipse, including temperature, humidity, illuminance (the amount of light spreading over a given surface), and wind speed. At a later time, high school students will take the qualitative data, such as the darkness and the cooler temperature that they experience during the eclipse, and connect it to the quantitative data the weather sensor will gather.
ALL GRADE LEVELS: Students will make a pinhole projector that they can take home and use during the eclipse to indirectly see the moon covering the sun.

Prior to April 8, students will receive literature to take home so they can learn more about the eclipse over spring break.

Students in grades K-2 will read the book Total Solar Eclipse: A Stellar Friendship Story.