Starting January of with Productivity

Starting 2019 Off with Productivity
January 9th

 Agricultural Research & Development - Antibiotic Resistance Testing

Students have made plans for ordering their antibiotic research project materials, made a plan for experimentation, begun a data collection plan, and above are seen in the beginning of a lesson about data.  Here they are learning about accuracy and precision.

 Intro to Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources

Students in this class are learning about cellular contents and DNA. They have completed activities in identifying organelle functions, DNA structure and replication, identifying trait categories and their variances, and shown above they have learned how to use both physical and chemical separation techniques for harvesting DNA from a strawberry.

 Animal and Plant Biotechnology

Students have done several lessons on the controversy associated with genetically modified organisms, and have learned sterile technique.  In the above photo, students are preparing growth media for ferns in sterile tissue culture. They will autoclave the media, then when cooled enough will pour the media into culture vessels, and then culture ferns onto the fresh media. 

Plant Science

Students in this course recently completed a unit covering flower anatomy and function. Today they began a unit to understand classification and taxonomy.  In the photo above students have been assigned to develop their own dichotomous key using identification features they chose.

Science Fair Preparation

We will be hosting a science fair on February 25th.  Students are busy preparing by running experiments, writing their analysis, and preparing for presentations. In the two photos below, one student is trying to answer the question of which of the three turfgrass species harvest the most carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? She enlisted some help from classmates and is using a data logging device with a CO2 chamber to measure the gas level removed by each of the three turfgrasses. She will present her findings at our science fair.

PTO plants

Our students will be growing pansies for the SCVTHS PTO to give away to staff in May.  Below we are setting up our new thermostat to control a heat mat needed to create optimal conditions for pansy seed germination.