“They look so cute,” second-grader Gilberto Carranza said of the baby chicks that hatched in his classroom at Northwest Elementary School.

In early June, baby chickens were born in all of the second-grade classrooms, part of an annual unit on animal life cycles. Incubators with eggs were delivered to each room, and students had to ensure that they were kept at 100 degrees for three weeks. Once the baby chicks broke through their shells, they were moved to other containers and cared for by the students for about a week until going back to Suffolk County Farm in Yaphank.

Teacher Annette Fox said that her students hypothesized about how many eggs would hatch. They also completed writing assignments about the development of the baby chicks and practiced using transition words.