“We are so often caught up in our destination that we forget to appreciate the journey, especially the goodness of the people we meet on the way. Appreciation is a wonderful feeling, don’t overlook it.” – Unknown

If you do not have an Iditarod Insider subscription yet, now is the time for you to subscribe. You and your class will have the opportunity to view videos, follow mushers through GPS tracking, watch live broadcasts, and view the live finish in Nome. Having an Insider subscription is not required for this lesson, but it will allow students to access an extensive amount of information. During the race my class will be taking on the role of the Jr. Insider Crew. This lesson keeps students involved in the race while producing quality writing, videos, and social media posts.

The Jr. Insider lesson will be continuous throughout the race. There are seven jobs for our Jr. Insider Crew to complete. Each day the groups will rotate to a new job. Every day we will begin by watching the featured video clip of the day on the Iditarod website. Each group will then be assigned their Jr. Insider job for the day which include; Blogger, Twitter, Video, Leaderboard, and Temperature. The students will then explore the website for updates on the race. In their groups they will be able to view video clips, check out the live GPS trackers, analyze the leaderboard, and read the various blogs on different race topics.

The Bloggers will be posting a blog updating our audience on the race. They will focus on the previous day’s news updates. They have the option of writing a story about a musher, a checkpoint, the leaders, the red lantern musher, or any topic they feel is newsworthy. Kidblog is a safe and easy blog site for your students to use in class. An excellent feature of this blog is that the teacher must approve the blog before it can actually go live.

If you don’t have access to any blog sites, create a homemade blog wall outside your classroom. Students can handwrite their blogs and post them to your “wall.” You could keep Post-it notes nearby for other students or teachers to comment on their posts.

The Twitter group will be posting live race updates in the form of tweets. The group must share at least six tweets using #iditarod15. They are able to post updates on the leaders and any important race news. If you are unable to use Twitter in your district, create a Twitter “wall” in your classroom. Make a wall in your classroom replicate that of a Twitter wall. Students can post their handwritten tweets to the “wall.”

There will be three groups creating video clips. One group will create a short video clip on the leaders of the race. Another group will create a video clip on the current checkpoint the leaders are going through. The third group will create a video clip on the mushers near the back of the standings. My students will edit their videos using WeVideo. In their video clips they will need to provide race information to our audience. An enhancement for your video clips could be to shoot your video in front of a “green screen” and edit the video to make it appear the students are actually reporting from the Iditarod trail.

The Leaderboard group is in charge of updating the leaderboard. They will need to update the place each musher is in, the checkpoint they have most recently checked through, and the number of dogs each musher is running. You can have your students create a leaderboard using Google Drive and then share the link to Twitter. Another option is to create a large leaderboard poster to hang in the classroom.

The Temperature group will be finding temperatures for different places along the trail. One location students will find is temperatures for the nearest checkpoint to the leader. Students will also find the temperature for the nearest checkpoint to the Red Lantern musher. Finally, they will find the temperature for the nearest checkpoint to our class musher, Cindy Abbott. The students will provide both Fahrenheit and Celsius for their temperatures. An option is to also include your hometown’s temperature to discuss the difference in temperatures.

This lesson is another way to keep your students engaged in the race while still working on their reading, writing, speaking, and technology skills. Even if you don’t have access to some of the social media from this lesson, there are different options for you to still complete this activity. Again, I highly recommend subscribing to Iditarod Insider. It will enhance this lesson as well as provide you with quality race coverage.

Jr. Insider Lesson Plan

Jr. Insider Activity Worksheet