Iditarod in the 50 States!

Iditarod is successfully used in all 50 states (and many foreign countries) as a tool to help students meet academic goals and learn their basic skill. Preschool through university level teachers use the race with students. Private schools, public schools, and home school families use the race as a teaching tool.

Take a look at what is going on in the United States. Then, send us your summary for us to collect and post to help more teachers reach the needs of students. Send an email to let us know what you do. Let us know what you are doing, what successes you notice, and anything else you’d like to share!

We wondering which state has the most ‘Iditarod classrooms’. Florida, Texas, California, Wisconsin, Indiana have traditionally been in the top 10. What states will make this year’s top 10? Let us hear from you! Ten thousand plus schools follow the race each year! Let’s count you among them!

Thanks for all you do to help my students recognize that meeting challenges takes a lot of hard work. Each year for the past dozen years or so, this race has captured the minds of my students!

My students had a musher come to our classroom to visit before the start of the race. We have our own I Kid A Rod.

From science, to math, to language arts, my students are involved in wanting to do school work while following the race.

Thanks for the lessons you provide on the website. I love the song from Cathy Walters.

The project starts with learning about Alaska then the Iditarod Race. The class goal is to learn the history of the Iditarod and its impact on Alaska today. There are a few smaller objectives, such as writing a friendly letter to the musher they are following throughout the race, as well as analyzing the lifeskills needed to compete in the race. My students also compete in a IditaRead…

We all get so much joy out of learning about Alaska, the Iditarod, and the mushers. My students come back every year and ask about it. After studying the Iditarod for 15 years, I finally was able to travel there this summer…My family and I took a 10 day northern cruise, and then a 3 day land tour into Denali National Park. It is something my family and I will never forget.

My class followed the Iditarod this year. We tracked each musher we chose and recorded their daily mileage. We made trading cards for our mushers and looked at images daily of the race. We would love to write to the mushers that we followed. We have been learning about letter writing and feel it will be a great follow-up to this unit. We enjoyed this unit so much! My class couldn’t wait to see each day on the gps tracker where their musher was. It was a great experience for all of us!

Our principal is Rick Holt, who raced in the 2008 Iditarod, he introduced me to the race last year and I have tried to include objectives of doing this project in my Reading Standards. This year we read numerous books on dog racing and my students are so excited to ‘adopt’ a musher and follow him/her throughout the race. Each day they will log on to the official site to log their statistics. They will also write a question each day about something they are wondering. My goal is to support my writing teachers, who are working on letter writing.

This is very new to us, our school is about 75% second language learners and we are a very poor socioeconomic area. But since Rick has been here developing a real interest in this sport. My kids are very impressed that these mushes have so many dogs and that they can do things outside when it is cold.

I have lived in Colorado my entire life, I have a son that lives in Anchorage as an Environmental Scientist, so I do get a chance to come up to Alaska once a year.

Students will read A-Z books (2) about the Iditarod to build background information. The 16 students I have for reading read between a 1st & 4th grade level. The goal is for students to be engaged and want to read.

There are 5 teams in the class and each team chose a musher they believe will win. I put up the parts of
the route on the board and will mark which team is in the lead as a way to keep up with the race. I also chose a fiction read aloud about the Iditarod called Black Star Bright Dawn by Scott O’Dell.

I am the student teacher for this class from the University of Bridgeport. I am coming up with a writing lesson and thought this was a great idea since they are learning about the Iditarod.

Our 3rd grade reading students participate in an Idita-Read. We find out they really enjoy turning the pages of the books and reading as their mushers travel from checkpoint to checkpoint.

While reading the story Balto, my students became fascinated with the journey and challenges Balto faced on his mission. Seeing their enthusiasm, I realized the incredible opportunity for learning.

Project goals are aligned with the Florida Sunshine State Standards for the writing process. LA 3311, LA 3321, LA 3331, LA3341. Objectives include prewriting, generating ideas, determining purpose, organization using graphic organizers, editing for language conventions.

More importantly, the Iditarod is providing me, as a special educator, an opportunity to bring meaningful and relevant learning to my students. Special education students experience repeated failures when presented with “fit all” state mandated tests. This project will open up a new world for my students, where success will come not from a bubble form, but from an understanding of determination, sacrifice, hard work, and the limitless potential of the human spirit.

Our three fifth grade classes are presently running their own Iditarod along the southern trail after forming mushing teams of three. It is a race between the three classrooms tied into math concepts and each team running 100 laps. Students have been researching the competitors for 2009, then in March each team will choose a musher and follow them along the trail incorporating writing, geography, map skills, and also measurement when making their dog sled and Husky cookies (I bought cookie cutters in these shapes off of e-bay).

The Iditarod is taught across the curriculum in fifth grade. We conclude with letters to the mushers to reinforce the skill of writing a friendly letter.

The boys and girls in this class are highly individual and somewhat competitive. Although they enjoy team sports, they relish individual challenges and risk taking. However, goal setting has not been a priority and mushers provide a good role model for that character building trait. Most students are Georgia natives and have not experienced the wind and low temperatures of northern states. They are fascinated, as I am too, by the extreme climate and the relationship between mushers and their dogs. I think it is important that students connect with sports heroes that live their dream and are not highly paid but are persistent, strong physically and mentally, goal oriented, caring, and simply very cool.

This is my first year using Iditarod with students. I hope to help students make a real world connection , one way to do that is with letter writing. Students will understand that the receiver is as important as the writer (reason for research, clear writing). The project will also be a step toward researching for interviews later in the year. Familiarity with Alaska will enrich state studies in their regular classroom.

Building Math Skills…. 4th and 5th Grade- Can be adapted for other grade levels.

I will share aspects of the Marvelous Musher lesson that was particularly enjoyable. Many of my lessons are hybrid and consist of resources located on the official site, online, and my personal interpretation.

Each year students create gorp. After creating their personalized mix, they must calculate the fraction, decimal, and percentage of each food item included. This is a wonderful opportunity to introduce 5th grade math standards in my 4th grade gifted lesson.

The lesson is extended further once we start analyzing the musher lists for the current year’s race.

Students must calculate the fraction, decimal, and percentage of male and female participants; male and female participants from Alaska, the lower 48, and other countries; and male and female participants that are novice and veterans.

After completing their calculations, students use Unifix cubes to represent their data. Rankings are then given to each data set to determine the probability of the winner. Students are provided an opportunity to research mushers, including their bio and previous racing record, to select a musher to follow through the race.

Data is kept on a classroom chart, as well as a wall sized trail of the Iditarod.

Students are not asked to predict the winner. Instead, I ask them to predict their placement based on the research they collected. The student who comes closest to their prediction is awarded a prize at the end of the race.

I will not allow students to pick the top three finishers from the previous year.

Beth, Georgia

Aloha from the 50th state! I homeschool my children and for the past 2 years we have followed the Iditarod. It has been a great experience for us. We clear off an entire wall in our home and hang a big map of Alaska. This year we each charted the musher we chose on the large map as well as a small map each one had for their own musher. We hung pictures of the musher we chose on the wall along with pictures of their dogs. We each also had a Musher tracking form we filled out in the morning and evening depending on where our musher was on that day. We downloaded all this from the web site.

I gave them an added challenge this year to make predictions through out the race. Then they were to see how close they came to their predictions. We predicted things like – what day would your musher arrive in Nome, how far would they go in a particular day, how many dogs would they have at the end of a certain day, what place would the musher be once they arrived at Nome. There were other items we watched also. They will write their musher once the race is over and we will send the letter to the musher. I even join in the fun! It is a great experience in all avenues of learning. This year we also read the book “Winterdance” along with the race as each musher got to that particular checkpoint. Our last musher came in today so we have 1 more chapter left.

I appreciate all the ideas and suggestions online. We look forward to this each year.

We connect the race to our reading program. It is a great incentive that seems to work to inspire students to read.

Prior to and during the Iditarod Race our grade level teaches an Iditarod/Alaska interdisciplinary unit. After doing some background-building activities, we allow the students to select a musher based on the online bios. Writing to a musher seems to provide greater motivation to learn about the history of the race as well as the geography, history, and culture of Alaska. My students have written to and followed mushers’ daily progress on the internet for 9 years and this will be the third year that we have subscribed to the Insider.

Objectives of this unit include successful composition of a friendly letter, students will increase their knowledge of the aforementioned aspects of Alaska, students will be motivated to read fiction as well as nonfiction materials (including biographies) using strategic reading and consequently will improve their reading skills, and students will learn to use the internet to procure information. Students will learn to read and record information on charts and practice map skills as we log musher’s daily progress on charts as well as maps. Note that we have purchased numerous fiction and nonfiction materials over the years from the Iditarod Trail Committee and from other resources.

I begin this unit in January using many of my own photographs and personal knowledge of Alaska (I’ve been there several times and LOVE it.) Language arts includes the children reading chapter books such as “Balto”, “Stone Fox’, and “Snow Dogs! Racers of the North”, and comparing and contrasting what makes each dog and each musher successful—perseverance, courage, determination. We also read “Granite”, “Togo”. “Akiak”, and “Big enough Anna”. Creative writing is used regularly: if I could be a musher… and similar ideas. We use map and geography skills to track the route of the race and the terrain over which the mushers travel. Each child selects a musher about whom he will learn in January. They go to web sites to see and learn about the musher and the dogs. Letter writing skills are taught to prepare for writing to the mushers prior to the race. During the race each child charts and graphs his mushers progress Math skills are used daily as teams change sizes and miles are crossed; we also do an Iditarod problem of the day—a challenge math activity to develop problem solving skills which I create each year using actual musher information. Photos from Iditarod calendars of past years and Iditarod souvenirs are on display to motivate the children. We design Iditarod posters of our own and have booty races—putting booties on large stuffed dogs in the classroom. This is a popular unit each year and older students come back often to catch up on Iditarod news. It is the unit I most enjoy teaching.

Again this year my students will be writing and sending letters to mushers. Each child has already selected a musher about whom to learn and whom they will be following throughout the race. Children will also be charting and graphing their musher’s progress daily during the race. Each has read several books about the history of the Iditarod and about sled dog racing in general. This is the fifth year I have participated in this project.

We read the website news and create math daily problems for the students! They love it!

March is spring time for some, but for us, it is Iditarod season. We start in the fall to plan our lessons and we introduce the mushers in December. We have a huge party at the end of the race to celebrate everything we have learned.

I’m a special education teacher and I’m going to be tracking five of the mushers with my 3rd grade reading group. We are going to read the chapter book “Stone Fox” which is about a little boy that enters a dog sled race. I thought we could follow the Iditarod to connect the story to something real life that is happening! After reading the book, I wanted to have the students write an e-mail to the mushers they picked to follow.

We are covering the race from start to finish with each student researching and following one to two mushers. Students are keeping a journal with information they find: race results, emails and letters they have sent and received, and personal thoughts on the Iditarod. Students will also be doing several other writing assignments connected to the race. They will keep track of their musher’s progress on a large to scale map and will watch daily videos of the race.

They will be looking to make a personal connection with their musher to gain first-hand knowledge, to develop their interpersonal skills and to make the race experience more meaningful.

This is our first year using the Iditarod in the classroom. Our students are from a small town in Maine and enjoy many of the same outdoor activities as students in Alaska would- hunting, fishing, snow sledding, ice fishing, etc.

My students attend Northwest Middle School, home of the Husky. We also have an “Iditarod” behavior program that we implement at our school. They really enjoyed learning about and following the Iditarod this year.

This week I started my after school k-4 students on the history of Alaska -using an over head projector.

How big is the state/facts/climate ocean. The students wrote facts down on their own map-which will become a journal once the Iditarod starts. Once the race starts the students will use the computer lab to follow a musher through the trail check in time and check out time-(again figure out the miles and how long their musher stayed to rest and the dogs too)

Today the students will use google earth to locate the towns on the trail and check points.(this is a half hour block of time) also today the students will measure from Ashburnham to Anchorage AK. They’ll also discover how many miles/time zones are between here and there.

I am teaching a writing intensive course for freshmen. Students are exploring the diversity of the canine and how form follows function allowing canines to do a variety of jobs. A lot of focus happens to be on sled dogs because I breed and show Siberian Huskies. Bridgewater State College. Most of the students are athletes.

Since I teach 2 grades, I have the same students 2 years in a row and they get so excited to follow the Iditarod and start asking on the first day of school about when we are going to start the Iditarod.

We will be learning how to write a friendly letter and how to address an envelope. I find if they are writing to a “real” person, they take more care and interest in the project.

Following the race each year is the highlight of our year. We race our own math race solving problems. We read books. We use maps. We follow the race on the computers. It is wonderful because all students are engaged in the lessons and don’t want to miss school during the race.

Can’t get enough of the race! Thanks for all you do! Cheering on the mushers is great!

Writing friendly letter for language arts and learning about the Iditarod for Social Studies are our projects. (1st year doing this!)
Lacy, 3rd Grade

I am teaching a small group of homeschooled students a four-week unit study on the Iditarod. For this project, the students will learn to write a friendly letter. I have used the Iditarod as a unit study for our own students for about 7 years and now I am sharing this with other homeschooled students.

Please keep giving the great lessons to us. You have so much to choose from and we are blessed to have your website. We do math and reading the most. Of course following the race is pretty neat!

The students will learn about the history of the race, read books about the Iditarod, and follow their mushers progress online. I have been using the race for 15 years. I love the Iditarod and my classes have been inspired by it for many years! Thank you for all your hard work!

In the 3 math classes I teach we learned about the history of the Iditarod and each student and staff member chose a musher to follow. Students were required to update a “Checkpoint Record Sheet” each day and find out any information about the previous day’s standings and stories of interest using technology skills. Students also used math skills by graphing their musher’s progress as well as how a day’s hours are spent on the trail.

One final project was that students wrote essays or poems about what it is like to be running the Iditarod. We also had a “closing celebration” which included working on Iditarod math puzzles, eating healthy food, and taking turns being sled dogs and mushers by pulling a sled (with wheels that a parent made for us- photos on the school’s web-site) up the hallway.

Hi,
My name is Fran and I teach grade 5 in Northwood, New Hampshire. I am combining math and the Iditarod race in my classes. Each student chose a musher to follow and have been so excited each day reporting on their progress in the race. I thought as a closing activity the students could write to their musher. Would it be possible to get a list of addresses? We wouldn’t write to them until April when each has returned home.
I know my students would enjoy this final activity.

Alaska is so different from our state that the students are very interested to learn about the race. Doing math problems is also fun for them. They love getting to know the mushers in a personal way thanks to your website.

The students truly enjoy everything that Iditarod offers. They are so excited to learn about the Iditarod. Each year the website improves and I also learn ore information as well as do the children.

Our students enjoy following the race. They like to compare our state to Alaska. The school day is way too short during the Iditarod. Kids want to be in school. They don’t want to go home until they’ve checked on their favorite musher!

Many of the students have never heard of the Iditarod, so this is a great opportunity to teach the students about it. The Iditarod provides many great learning activities that are engaging for students. This unit plan will hopefully have an everlasting impact on the students!

I am student teaching in 4th grade classroom this semester. He gave me the great idea of using this topic for my unit plan. I am going to begin by teaching the students about Alaska and then focus in on the race using many useful teaching resources off the website. The goal/objective is for students to gain an understanding of different events around the world and where they are located geographically.

I work with all at risk students who have learning and/or behavior disabilities. Most of my students live in nearby projects and have very difficult home environments. They are many years below grade level in reading and writing and generally do not like to do either. Our class is following the Iditarod Race this year and doing several reading, writing and research projects around it to help motivate my reluctant readers. So far they are super excited!

We enjoy doing math, reading, and map activities during the race. One of my students hopes to run the race someday. We all, including me, learn new things each day!

In our school, there are four fourth grade teachers working with students. We are creating a cross-curricular unit including activities in math, social studies, language arts, and technology. Our students will be choosing a musher, graphing/charting their progress, writing friendly letters to the mushers, completing an informational report, and writing personal narratives. Various math skills will be included as information regarding the progress of mushers is gathered. We are also reading books (titles chosen from this website) in small groups.

There are 23 students in my class. I have 3 students on Special Education Programs. This is a very diverse socio-economic group! 65% of my students have never been out of Ohio.

I have 17 students ranging in grades 9-12. It is a self contained special education classroom for students with learning disabilities which make it extremely hard to be in the general classroom. I am using the Iditarod race for all 4 core subjects; English, Math, science and history. It has something that appeals to all students. They are really enjoying learning about the dogs, mushers, and racers.

My reading group each completed a newsletter page regarding some aspect of dogsledding. They would love to send a copy to a musher and wish them good luck. We would love to have a musher’s name and contact info! Thank you so much!

I would like to have my class write to the mushers because it correlates with our writing standards, and the students would LOVE getting involved in writing to the musher of their choice. In turn, the students will also be “tracking” their musher, with the classroom GPS tracker I purchased from the Iditarod website. A colleague and myself went to Alaska on an educational trip with students this past summer of 2009, and we learned so many amazing things about Alaska, and immediately knew we wanted to include a Unit on the Iditarod in and integrate it into our curriculum. I’ve had the privilege of getting to visit the Iditarod HQ in Wasilla and came back with videos, books, maps, etc. to use as teaching tools for my students. We also study the regions of the U.S., the West being one of them, and the Iditarod Headquarters in Alaska is one of the places in the students’ social studies books, that they learn about. We also do mean, median, mode, range, etc, and hope to have students track the mushers progress and compare data between checkpoints/amongst teams, etc. The students will also be using researching skills, which is another standard in 4th grade to research their musher of choice, etc. I can’t wait to get them started!!!

We briefly study the Iditarod each year in our Social Studies curriculum, but never to the extent that I plan to this year with a Unit of study on the Alaskan culture and the Iditarod. Plus, now I am equipped with first-hand knowledge of Alaska since my trip!

My kids are fantastic, enthusiastic, and love learning about new cultures. They were so interested in my trip to Alaska as well and my photos from the trip, that I know they are going to be so excited when I fill them in about our GPS tracker, following, researching, and writing to the mushers, doing an “I-Kid-A-Rod”, etc.

We incorporate the Iditarod into our studies across the curriculum. We will be working on writing friendly letters in the upcoming weeks, and since the students are currently following the race, we decided that they could write letters to their mushers. I have used the Iditarod as a teaching tool in my classroom for the past six years. My students are very excited to study and learn more about this race. Most of them have never heard of it and they are amazed to find out what all it takes to be a musher.

Each year, my teaching unit gets longer and longer. There are so many ways to connect the race through curriculum activities. Thanks for what you do.

We are reading the book Stone Fox. We are interested in finding out more about what the personal experience is like for mushers as well as working on letter writing format.

My students have IEP objectives that address writing and spelling skills. They are very interested in the Iditarod and we plan to follow it closely. They will each choose a musher to write to and follow in the race. My students are hard workers and each of the 4 that I am working with have progressed 3 or more grade levels in reading in the 2 years that they have been working with me.
LouAnn, 5th Grade, Special Education

3^rd graders are required to learn how to write a letter (writing). They are also studying perseverance, responsibility, respect and fairness. (character education) We are learning mapping skills (social studies) and measurement-distance and temperature (math). We have also learned about ecosystems and adaptations in science. This is a unit study covering all subject areas. I’ve been doing this for 2 years, i was referred to this by a fellow teacher. My students get so excited about this every year!

My students are hard working and very enthusiastic about learning about this race. No one had heard of this race up to this point, so it should be a great learning experience for them.

My name is Jeremy and I teach 5^th grade in the little town of Arlington Vermont. I have been teaching for 6 years and have taught about the Iditarod every year. The kids are BEYOND excited about it!

We each track a musher’s progress, do charting, find info about the trails, sleds, dogs, mushers, mapping, etc…

This is my 6^th year using the race. The students are very VERY excited about their mushers and the Iditarod as a whole. I already have a bunch that want to race in it.

This is the first year that I am going to incorporate writing letters to the mushers. (we previously wrote to celebs asking for autographed pictures and the kiddos LOVED it!)

Thanks so much for the letter writing info! Last year, we heard back from 33 mushers! I’ve used the race for 10 years with students! My students think that I should apply for Iditarod Teacher on the Trail!

Following the Iditarod gives RELEVANCE to every part of our curriculum with Reading, Writing, Math, Art, Social Studies, and Science. We would like to write to the Mushers and Congratulate them. Of course, we would be thrilled to hear back from any of them too. Writing to the Mushers allows students to make personal connections with them beyond just looking at their pictures online. Students apply skills learned for the writing process. Already, each student has a musher that they are cheering on for the Iditarod 2010. Writing to the mushers allows them to connect with others beyond the class and state. My class is also writing to soldiers overseas. Tracking the mushers allows us to integrate multiple subject areas like Reading as we learn about mushers from biographies and math as we add up distances traveled. It allows my students to relate information to real situations. Perhaps personal stories will develop as students visit Alaska and mushing farms. Thanks for helping us connect to others in our world.

For the past three years my students have been learning about Alaska and The Iditarod race. Each student follows a musher on the trail and completes various writing activities about their musher including stories, acrostic poems, and mini-biographies. This year I would like to include the option of writing friendly letters to our mushers. The objective of this lesson would be to practice our letter writing skills using appropriate etiquette and practicing grammar. The goal for me is not to necessarily receive letters back from the mushers, but rather having my students practice their writing skills and encouraging/thanking our mushers for a job well done.

As a teacher, I am so thankful for the wonderful learning opportunities this race and its participants make possible for us. My students have a contagious enthusiasm that spreads excitement to the other elementary students. I even had a student from last year come back and tell me that he was doing his own mini-unit at home on The Iditarod since he does not have it in class this year. Thank you so much for all your hard work in letting classrooms across the nation get just a taste of what it means to participate in The Iditarod.

I am an avid follower of the Iditarod and get my students involved extensively each year in a myriad of activities to raise their enthusiasm about the history embedded in the event and the sport. One student got so excited during her 2nd grade experience, that she actually set a goal for herself to run the Iditarod someday. Although she has not met that goal yet, she did work at the finish line three years ago and sent me pictures to use in my unit, 12 years after I had her in class.

Each year my third grade class reads about Balto and then we discuss the Iditarod and Alaska.

I am a third grade teacher in WI and want to join the Iditarod Insider. I want to use it at home to preview the news before I use it in my classroom, but I also want to use it in my classroom.

And we thought Wyoming was the wild west! Our students follow the race and can’t wait to mark their musher’s progress. They also complete math and reading assignments. At the end of the race, we put on a big ‘news broadcast’ that summarizes the race.

Good afternoon, I am sure that things are beautiful in Alaska right now! I almost moved to McGrath, the halfway point of the Iditarod. It was very exciting to be in the bush; however, I remained in DC.

Teaching areas of focus in our Iditarod projects: Social Studies and Geography (I think that kids from an urban area would be fascinated by Alaska’s topography, and the race itself. Very exciting! We would like to communicate with the mushers and have first-hand knowledge of what they are experiencing, and be able to track their progress on the map.)

I am currently a librarian at an urban, bilingual school. I want to teach my children about the Iditarod’s history, Alaskan geography, and the sport of dog mushing. Our school is bilingual in English and Spanish. We have students from over 30 different countries. 80% of our students are from low-income families. We love books and reading. This is the first time that I have participated in the Iditarod activity.


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