Author: Kindra Jones
Planning Unit: Grayson County CES
Major Program: 4-H Science, Engineering, and Technology Core Curriculum
Plan of Work: Enhance Life Skills of Youth Through School Enrichment and After School Programs
Outcome: Initial Outcome
Each year, the 4-H Agent works with Grayson County 4th grade students at H.W. Wilkey Elementary and Oran P. Lawler Elementary schools supplementing SET activities into their science curriculum. The most anticipated activity of the year is the dissection of the cow eyeball among the two schools, additionally this year Caneyville Elementary was to do the dissection as well. The agent began preparing for the activity in January for roughly 190 students to take part in the dissection by ordering over 100 cow eyeballs, as the students would be paired up in the classrooms. However, as the early part of 2020 saw, all programs came to a halt.
The students learn about this activity at the beginning of the school year and wait anxiously until April when they get to participate in the lesson. Each month, the students would ask many questions about what that lesson would be like from excitement. Though the school programs were canceled, the agent still wanted to work out a way for as many of those students to participate in the coveted activity as possible, so among the Beat the Boredom Challenge, a video lesson was created on the cow eyeball dissection.
The 17 minute video was created at the Extension Office by the agent and staff member, detailing the dissection so that youth could follow along. When posted on the Extension Office Facebook page, patrons were encouraged to request a cow eyeball to dissect on their own at home with the video instructions. Immediately following the posting, requests began coming in. By the time requests slowed and stopped coming in, 108 cow eyeballs had been packaged up with 114 youth participating. Some had siblings who shared the eyeball in order to help spread the activity farther among youth in the county. It was not limited to just 4th grade students, though many of the youth were; some were older, middle school/high school youth, who were already out of elementary school when the agent began doing the lesson. In addition to county participation, several 4-H Agents utilized the video so they could also have the lesson in their counties providing their youth with eyeballs. The video has reached over 2100 people with multiple shares.
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