What does a lead dog see on the trail?

In my class we have been learning about the differences between perspective and point of view in our writing and in the stories we read, and how they help us understand someone’s experiences in a different and unique way.  We wanted to write about the point of view of the different participants in the Iditarod: dedicated mushers, excited spectators, and Iditarod lead dogs.

What a fan sees on the Iditarod Trail

What a musher sees on the Iditarod Trail

What a husky sees on the Iditarod Trail

For help with this lesson, I turned to rookie musher Patrick Beall.  Patrick was born and raised in Oklahoma, and he has trained with Mitch and Dallas Seavey.  He created a fantastic video showing a day in the life of a musher wearing a GoPro camera and was gracious and shared it with me to use in this lesson. 

Patrick Bealls – photo – Iditarod

It was a unique perspective that helped us “see” the world from a musher’s viewpoint.  We thought about other perspectives in this race, and what could be seen and felt on the trail by the huskies and the humans. 

A lead dog in front of a sled is low to the ground, so what landscape do they see?  A musher is riding the sled and can see the whole team in front traveling along, or maybe looks up to see the Iditarod Air Force overhead. 

A spectator at a checkpoint sees the entire team travel by, stretched out along the towline, perhaps at night with the northern lights above.  This activity really helped us think about the race and what special events make it unique.

[wpvideo GjRoDsPE]

We used a little plastic bowl to draw an eyeball, and then illustrated it from a particular perspective: a lead dog, a musher, or a spectator.  We thought carefully about the landscape and events that make the Last Great Race on Earth® as we illustrated our perspectives.

When we finished our perspective masterpieces, we thought about how we could incorporate this into a writing piece about point of view.

Eyes on the Trail

Purpose, Point of View and Perspective *Link unavailable at this time.

PIE_Download_Aug_2015 *Link unavailable at this time.

We created an anchor chart to help us understand point of view, the perspective from which a piece of text is written.  This can be a bit complicated for young students, but starting with the “eye on the trail” art project made it much simpler to understand. 

The Point of View anchor chart

We learned about first, second and third person point of view, and then put a photo of an Iditarod team at the starting line in the middle of a piece of construction paper.  We sectioned off the paper, and in each section the students had to write about the Iditarod picture from  the different perspectives: 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person limited, 3rd person omniscient, and 3rd person objective.

This activity helped us understand point of view, and it helped us bring the Iditarod into our Writer’s Workshop. 

Thank you Patrick for sharing a little of your life in Alaska with us!