Elementary Students Share Their Pandemic Experiences

For the past 11 weeks, education reporter Liz McCormick helped guide us through the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on our state’s education system. She spoke with experts, teachers and parents about ways the state is tackling learning loss and the social-emotional needs of our kids. In the series finale, you will hear from a handful of elementary students from Berkeley and Jefferson counties who reached out to WVPB to share their experiences during the pandemic. LISTEN NOW.

Whether your children are getting ready for a new school year or just setting up a home craft area to make their own moving art, keeping their workspaces neat and organized will help them know where to find all their supplies. Talk with your children about how they want their workspace set up. Much like Arthur and Buster, we all have our own ideas of how we want things organized. What works best for your child? One idea for a homework area is a pencil shaped pencil holder! Try this easy Arthur-themed craft to sort and organize small items with your kindergartener or other big kid. START CRAFTING!

In this video segment from Cyberchase, the CyberSquad discovers a bug problem in the Cybrary. They know that something needs to be done to stop the bugs before they eat everything, so the CyberSquad creates a bar graph to display the number of bugs they found in each room. Ms. Fileshare is concerned about the bug problem until she is shown a different bar graph showing a smaller number of bugs than she was aware of. The CyberSquad must figure out why the two graphs look different and which one shows the correct number of bugs in each room. LEARN MORE.

Education Station returns with its fourth season on Wednesday, Sept.1, at 5:30 p.m. Schools that will be featured in the premiere episode include Warwood Elementary School in Ohio County, Nicholas County Career and Technical Center, and Literacy Volunteers of Harrison County. The series, produced by the West Virginia Department of Education and hosted by Alex Milanese, airs after school Monday through Friday at 5:30 p.m. with new episodes every Wednesday. We are excited to continue working with the WVDE to find ways to bring local educational content to our viewers.

Outlier: The Story of Katherine Johnson is a documentary produced by Kanawha County filmmaking company MotionMasters that focuses on a young woman from West Virginia would later become a space scientist and mathematician famous for accuracy in celestial navigation. It includes interviews with Johnson, NASA’s chief historian, a curator at The Smithsonian and Margot Lee Shetterly, author of Hidden Figures. Watch the broadcast on Tuesday, Sept. 7, at 7:01 p.m. on the West Virginia Channel!

Create An Air Purifier For the Classroom

This year, Hillary Creech – the parent of a tenth grader and wife to a teacher – had an unusual back-to-school shopping list. She ordered a box fan, some high-quality air filters, and a lot of duct tape. Why? To make a homemade air purifier for the local high school where her husband teaches. As an emergency room nurse practitioner, Creech has seen firsthand what the pandemic is doing and says she's been treating a lot of teenagers during the current COVID-19 surge. This has made her particularly nervous about high schoolers crowding into classrooms, and she is not alone. LEARN MORE.