“Every New Year allows you to start a new phase of life’s journey with optimism and confidence.”                      – Michael Josephson

Happy New Year! What does everyone do at the start of a new year?  Traditionally, people will establish a New Year’s Resolution. Every year I always hear people say their New Year’s Resolution is to exercise more. Now is the time to start, and why not involve your students and exercise across Alaska.

Exercise Across Alaska is a cross curricular activity as well as Common Core aligned. When your students arrive back from break, have them share their resolutions. The importance of setting fitness goals is a perfect topic for P.E. This class is where the activity will begin. Students will be challenged to exercise 1049 minutes outside of P.E. class. Each minute will equal 1-mile, with the goal of reaching Nome. It is important to remind students that mushers have to stay fit to run the Iditarod. They are not just riding on the back of a sled for 1000-plus miles. They, too, will be running, pushing, and breaking trail. It is critical for them to stay physically fit.

In language arts students will record their journey of exercising across Alaska. Journal entries can be written in a hand-made journal or using technology such as Google Drive. Allow students about 5-10 minutes each day to record their progress using the following prompts: 1. I exercised for ______ minutes yesterday. I did the following exercises…  2. This is important to my health because…  3. That is important because…

In social studies students are able to map their movement along the trail. There are many interactive maps online to choose from, but I like the simplicity of Google My Maps. If your students wish, they can add pictures of themselves working out to their map. Check out my example map.

Students will be finding the amount of calories they are burning as they exercise in science. Using the calorie burn calculator students are able to input their height, weight, age, and the minutes of their activity to calculate the amount of calories they burned. Sled dogs burn about 10,000 calories per day on the Iditarod. It will be fun for the students to see how long it will take them to burn 10,000 calories.

In math students will work with their minutes. Every couple of weeks the students will calculate the average amount of time they are working out each day.  They will also keep track of how many more miles (minutes) they have to work out until they will reach Nome.

Having an end goal in place makes working out that much easier. Participating in a challenge that many others are participating in also makes working out that much easier. The students can encourage each other to work out, encourage each other if they are down about their numbers, and they can work out with each other. Happy exercising.

Exercise Across Alaska Lesson Plan

Calories Burned Worksheet

How Long Until Nome Worksheet