Listening Center

Have you ever explored the photography of the Iditarod with your students?  A center you could use with your students is called Faces of the Iditarod.  The link is located on the homepage of iditarod.com, down on the right side.  Jeff Schultz, official photographer of the Iditarod for many years, started a project of photographing mushers, dogs, and volunteers along the Iditarod Trail.  Along with their portraits are their audio stories!  Students could choose two dogs to read about and compare and contrast, two mushers or volunteers to listen to their stories and write a summary, or however you want to set up the center!

Creative Innovation

Mushers are very innovative in their approaches to efficiency and equipment for the Iditarod Race.  This lesson, Idita-Vation, will give your students some background knowledge on some of the equipment improved upon through innovation and give them an opportunity to generate ideas and prototypes of their own!

Dog Care Brochure

Through this lesson, Dog Care Brochure, your students can research the thorough care regimen given the incredible Iditarod canine athletes.  With their findings, they can create a brochure outlining the dog care.  This might possibly connect to their own pet dogs.  It could also be a compare-contrast activity for sled dog needs versus pet dog needs.  We have attached a video, How to Make a Brochure in Google, on how students can build a brochure using Google docs to use instead of the link in the article.

Iditarod Problem Solving

Once your students know about equipment needed for the race, this is a motivating math problem solving activity to challenge them!  Math word problems involving figuring out the number of dog legs, booties, time zones, and looking up statistics on Iditarod.com in Race Archives to get more information are all aspects of this activity!  It can also be a springboard for you to be able to create additional math problems using Iditarod statistics.