Weather station report – East Sheen Primary School

East Sheen Primary school is committed to extending the opportunities for pupils to engage with STEM disciplines, understanding the importance of these areas in preparing children for the in which world they live in and will one day work. Thanks to the grant received from Richmond Scientific Society, we have been able to offer our children a wealth of new opportunities, which have enriched both our maths and science curriculum. Children in Year 3- 6 have benefited from the weather station.

Our weather station includes apparatus to measure wind speed and direction, air temperature and humidity, rainfall and atmospheric pressure. Having access to a system that measures all these aspects enriches the children’s understanding of the elements required in the Science curriculum, taking it beyond the theoretical in to the practical realm of science. We found that having the weather station on site has made children really interested in monitoring the weather as it has made learning about the weather real to them as it is using more relatable information/data.

Activities we have carried out include:
* Children (our Eco ambassadors) taking responsibility for checking the weather and updating the school during whole school assembly.
* Children creating weather reports based on our own data – both written and verbal
* Children using the data to create graphs and make comparisons to others places in maths, science and geography.
* Children are more interested in learning about the impacts of climate change – this links well to our whole school priority of becoming more environmentally intelligent.

Children have shown a real enthusiasm for looking at the data after particularly extreme weather days. Unfortunately, since June 2022 we have had to take the weather station down due to a large-scale building project. East Sheen Primary School, would like to thank the Richmond Scientific Society for their generosity and we are really looking forward to putting our weather station back up once our building work is completed later in 2023.