Dodd City ISD hosts Noble Research Institute (NRI) Youth Education Outreach

Posted Date: 10/21/2019

Dodd City ISD hosts Noble Research Institute (NRI) Youth Education Outreach

by Nathan Melson

Dodd City High School STEAM teacher Mr. Melson graciously hosted the Noble Research Institute (NRI) Youth Education Outreach team for 3 in-class agri-chemistry labs.  The Noble Research Institute is an Agricultural Research Institution located in Ardmore, OK that knows agriculture faces great challenges, and they are working to deliver solutions.  The institutes mission is organized into three main areas focusing on research, agricultural producer relations, and education.

Mr. Melson invited the NRI Youth Education Outreach team to Dodd City School to teach one of their outreach agriscience labs to his IPC and Biology students.  (These are free programs for schools within the 100-mile radius service area of the Noble Research Institute’s campus.) The students got to experience a “really cool” lab focusing on the element, iron (Fe).  The lab titled “Nails for Breakfast”, focused on 9th and 10th grade students. It discussed how Biochemistry is everywhere, even in the food we eat. In this lesson, students learned about elements in the periodic table and specifically about how important iron (Fe) is to humans and plants. The students got to experience using powerful magnets to extract iron from cereals.

Mr. Melson and his students really enjoyed this experiential learning provided by NRI, and are looking forward to future visits throughout the school year.  He would like to thank the Noble Research Institute for offering teachers like himself this valuable and very affordable (FREE) interactive lab experience for science and agricultural science students.

Below are some pictures from the lab.  The iron extracted by the students’ magnets on the top of the plastic bags is clearly visible in a couple of the pictures.