Lincoln High School biology teacher Ms. Berryhill has been incubating eggs for her classes to learn and observe life processes. They have since hatched and are being put up for adoption. Ms. Berryhill said “I love it” about the overall experience of hatching chicks. She has thirty chickens at her ranch, so she is not new to incubating chicks. The chicks are being used in a genetics unit to introduce biology vocabulary.

If she incubates chicks again, she will use a single rooster so students can predict the genetics of  the chicks. This long term learning experience also helped eliminate some misconceptions students had about chickens and eggs. “One of my students asked me, are all chickens female?” while another “thought they needed a rooster to lay an egg.” These misconceptions are understandable because people do not have any experience raising chickens.

Four people in Ms. Berryhill’s class will have a lot of experience very soon though. Ms. Berryhill is allowing pairs of chicks to be adopted by her students. “Its fun, its rewarding.” When Ms. Berryhill is not hatching chicks, she hosts Waffle Wednesday, grows thousands of flowers, and bikes.