Teach and Learn
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Grades 5-8 (Lessons could be adapted for other levels) Diamond Willow is a young Alaskan girl of Athabaskan and European descent who wants nothing more than to be allowed to mush her team of dogs alone to her grandparents’ house. When her first solo trip results in a horrible accident that blinds her family’s favorite …
As the year comes to a close, we have been organizing, cleaning up, and preparing our classroom for the new year. One of these tasks involves bringing down our Iditarod calendar from the wall. Old calendars can be recycled into a fantastic art project I like to call “stretched art” using basic art supplies and …
In honor of Thanksgiving this year, my class disguised paper turkeys as husky dogs and mushers preparing for the 2016 Iditarod. They wrote about their plans for escape from the farm in first person narratives. This time-honored school tradition involves a lot of creativity, humor, and great writing. What a perfect way to save a turkey …
We have been spending some time in class this last week learning about some of the people behind the scenes of the Iditarod that help bring The Last Great Race® to people around the world. When my students see the amazing photographs of the mushers and their dog teams along the trail, they ask …
The 2016 Iditarod class has been learning about informational text and graphic features in my language arts class. We used the Scholastic book Mush! Sled Dogs of the Iditarod by Joe Funk and the Iditarod.com site to help us learn all about the history and fascinating trivia and facts of the Last Great Race on …
Trent Herbst, Iditarod veteran musher and Idaho teacher, shares a unique program with audiences focusing on a very hands-on experience for his 4th graders. The students choose a project to build and it’s ranged from rolling to floating to sliding vehicles. The sliding ones, the sleds they build, get pulled by a couple of Trent’s …
Iditarod Musher Jodi Bailey wrote a post in her kennel’s blog about the numbers in her drop bags for Iditarod. Drop bags are what mushers pack in advance of the race and send out to the race checkpoints so they have a supply of gear, dog food, and people food during the race. This post …
Our amazing 4th grade students at Eanes Elementary School spent several days designing and creating a “Circuit City” in each classroom for the culmination of our energy unit in science. Of course, the 2016 Iditarod class created the city of Nome, Alaska, under the twinkling northern lights, with dedicated dog teams on their way to …
This week our Eanes Elementary School fourth graders have been continuing our research about energy, force, and motion in our science classes. We learned about Newton’s Laws of Motion, and we decided to put our knowledge to the test. In a wonderful STEM activity, our students created balloon racers using their science knowledge. My class …
The 2016 Iditarod class has been learning about mixtures and solutions in our science class, and I wanted to try combining our demonstrations and experiments with our amazing connection to Alaska this year. I decided to bring my fascination with the aurora borealis to class and combine it with some science magic, a good book, and a …