October Part 2
Agricultural Research & Development
Our students in this course have done some heavy planning and thinking. They have narrowed their research topic to Antibiotic Resistance as applied to livestock. Their research question will investigate how antibiotic plant based compounds can assist in controlling bacterial infections and reducing the need for traditional antibiotics. We will be searching for advisers to guide their research this coming week.
Animal & Plant Biotech
DNA replication
Hosted Law and Public Safety (LPS) and taught them to perform a CSI like DNA analysis. The lesson had students learn from mock scenario where DNA was harvested from a chewed shoe which "puppy chewed the shoe". Our Animal and Plant Biotechnology Students were team leaders for the LPS students and essentially the teachers for the LPS students. This allowed the Animal and Plant Biotech students to raise their learning bar and strongly reinforced all the knowledge and skills that were learned in previous lessons. And the best part: all the students loved this three day project.
Biotech students not long before the above CSI investigation prepared and presented the process of DNA replication. This lesson helps develop a foundation for understanding how other molecular processes work which student will investigate such as: transcription and translation, and protein production.
Plant Science
Plant Science students completed a portion of an anatomy unit in order to capture fresh leaves on trees and plants before the weather removes them from important and helpful trees. Below is a picture of students running a plant pigment investigation. They are doing this by crushing fresh leaf tissue on a filter paper and subjecting the filter paper to an alcohol source so that the pigments can be separated based on size over night. Great lesson in revealing any cloaked pigments and pigment size.
Intro to FANR
After several weeks of topics on Agricultural facets, communication, team building, and safety, Introduction to Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources students have started science units. We are now completing a soil science unit learning both physical and chemical properties of soil and applying how to communicate lab results in a professional lab report. This will help with writing for their Plant Science, Animal & Plant Biotech, Research & Development Courses while here in Ag Science.
FFA Career Development Event Prep
NJ FFA organizes four competitions classified as Career Development Events (CDE's). This November students will travel to a state level CDE for one of four events: Fruit and Vegetable Identification (students seen below preparing for this as a chapter level CDE), Dairy Products and Processing, Land Judging, and Turfgrass Management.
Lettuce Crop
Students worked together to plant a small crop of lettuce which we have growing in our greenhouse. The lettuce is harvested about four weeks after planting. The lettuce grows new leaves and can be harvested one or two more times afterwards about two to three weeks apart. Here you can see our LED grow light lighting almost the entire greenhouse at night. Very cool to see!
