On February 8, 2023, Dr. Bettler’s seventh-grade life science class at AHS started making terrariums as a project for one of their units. A terrarium is a glass container filled with soil and plants. Almost like a mini garden inside your house or classroom. Evey Flagello, one of the students in the seventh-grade life science class said, “The unit this connects with is interdependence. Which is ecosystems and ecology so this is setting up a mini ecosystem.” Dr. Bettler said, “In the future, I plan on planting and potting plants around the school and I’m going to use this project as a way to teach the students how to plant plants and keep them alive.” This process of doing this project only took the students a day to do since Dr. Bettler brought in all of the supplies they were going to need. First, they laid down rocks and charcoal. Then, they put dirt on top of it. Finally, they put the plants in the soil and watered them. They are currently waiting for the plants to fully grow. They plan on keeping the terrariums in the classroom for the rest of this year and maybe into next year if they survive. Dr. Bettler said, “For right now we were keeping the terrariums at only plants but we might eventually add animals when they become stable enough. Some animals we might add would be little bugs, lizards, or salamanders.”

They also do many other projects to stay engaged while also learning. Flagello said, “I enjoyed this project because we learned about how much each plant grew and the different layers of the soil.” Caleb Carson said, “I love doing projects because I get to be hands-on and don’t have to sit there and do a worksheet. We just recently did a poster over the different biomes.” Those can be viewed outside of the science wing on the wall. After their ecology unit, they started on evolution. They also did another project where they dissected pigs.

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In November 2022, the Armuchee high school 7th-grade science class dissected fetal pigs. Dr. Bettler is the teacher of the honors 7th-grade science class, and he likes to do labs to keep his students focused and engaged. Bettler said, “We were studying body systems and one of their standards is to see the interconnectedness of the body system. So we spent about a week dissecting the pigs.” The class collectively said that this lab was very fun and helped them learn about the pigs’ organs. 7th grader Kayden Johnson said, “We opened the pig’s mouth and examined everything in there, and then we cut open the pigs and memorized all of the organs.”

This lab was about a week-long experiment. Bettler said, “We went through the different systems, the circulatory system, the heart, the digestive system so that they could learn all of the different things about them. It took us several days to get through it all.” 7th grader Ethan Campbell liked looking at the mouth of the pig the best. He said, “My favorite part was probably when we cut the mouth open and got to see all the teeth inside and look at how the tongue was.”

The 7th graders enjoyed getting to take part in a hands-on experience. Johnson said, “Being able to cut it open and see what happened was very fun but also kind of gross.” The class said that it smelled weird and was disturbing at times, but it was worth it because of how much fun it was. Their English teacher, Mrs. Puckett said, “They talked about this lab all day for weeks. They loved it and were so excited about it!” Many of the students had very gruesome responses about their favorite part of the experiment. Maelee Culpepper said, “I liked rippings its eyeballs out and looking at its insides.” 7th grader Ethan Campbell had a similar response. He said, “It was fun when you saw the guts coming out.”

Although the students love doing labs, Bettler feels that it does not allow him to teach the students any better. He said, “You would think it would, and I feel that it is fun and keeps them engaged, but they learn more from discussions and seeing pictures and models.” As a teacher, it is important to make sure your students are staying engaged and focused, especially for a younger class, like 7th graders. Bettler said, “Everyone likes to do labs, so I think it helps in that way to keep them engaged and to not get bored.” Many of the students, however, felt differently about the project. Culpepper said, “I feel like it does help you learn better because you get to visually see it and do it yourself.” Doing science labs is a great experience where many students make memories with their classmates that they will remember forever.