News: Teacher stories

The students in Joyce Pippert’s biology class have been studying about GMOs: what they are, what they’re not, and the benefits that they bring. As closure to the unit, Pippert had them do the GMO speed dating activity from the Feed the World curriculum. Each student received either a donor or a recipient card with information about the organism and how using it to create a GMO could be he…

Help your students really understand the structure of DNA and its component parts! Ann Rougier teaches Biology and AP Anatomy at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton. Since attending the Ohio Corn & Wheat-sponsored Feed the World summer workshop, Rougier has incorporated several of the lessons into her classroom curriculum. As part of her DNA unit, Rougier designed the “Chromosome & DNA Inquiry”. The main object of this inquiry …

Many students show up to school each day wondering what will be on the lunch menu. Freshmen and sophomores in Mr. Todd Tayloe’s Scholarship Biology class at Carroll High School are learning about what might be on the menu decades from now and how they might become the scientists helping solve a potential global crisis. These students are growing corn to see how differences in genetically modified organisms and no…

Do you know how ethanol is made? Commercial production of fuel ethanol in the United States involves breaking down the starch present in corn into simple sugars (glucose), feeding these sugars to yeast (fermentation), and then recovering the main product (ethanol) and byproducts (animal feed and carbon dioxide). Ethanol is an alcohol produced through the process of yeast fermentation of sugars. The Corn fermentation in a bag lesson gives students …

Courtney Bockbrader teaches at Anthony Wayne High School. She attended an Ohio Corn & Wheat-sponsored summer workshop and received curriculum and lab supplies for her classroom. One of her students used a Feed the World lab for his science fair project. “My name is Patrick Miller and I am a sophomore enrolled in an AFNR 2 class. I did the ethanol nutrient testing lab as an agriscience fair experiment and it …

At Bethel-Tate High School, Samantha Williams’ honors biology students performed the fermentation in a bag lab. Each student group created their own experiment plan to test their chosen variables. Students then added various enzymes, yeast, various feedstock/corn stock, and warm water to snack size baggies. Then they measured the height of each bag to see how much they inflated. Students also used a breathalyzer to determine alcohol content, which …

Kelly Staley, 7th grade science teacher at Clear Fork Middle School, shares how she’s using what she learned at the summer 2-day Feed the World workshop sponsored by Ohio Corn & Wheat: My students begin this unit by studying the properties of water. They perform tests examining cohesion, adhesion, specific heat, and the pH of different sources of water. The students enjoyed the opportunity to choose from four different labs, …

After covering photosynthesis, Rebecca Scott of Field High School took her students through cellular respiration, including the corn fermentation in a bag activity. The activities and supplies were provided from Ohio Corn & Wheat-sponsored Feed the World workshop. Scott said, “First and foremost, the breathalyzer sure captured their interest! I would like to think that we had accurate results; one of our readings was .9!” Since the bags weren’t inflating quickly, …