View the lesson he used and writing samples from two 4th grade students by clicking here.

This lesson can be used with any grade level.  The original lesson and other information can be viewed by clicking here. Scroll to the Experience Journal.

Thanks goes out to Mr. Russoniello and his students for sharing their work!

The Alaskan Husky

By Gabrielle

Alaskan husky strong and smart,

Tall and brave with a beating heart.

Alaskan husky, a very good pleader,

Wants to be the front row leader.

Years go by too fast for him,

Now he has a very sore limb.

Even though he is old,

He still has dreams, big and bold.

Now he has passed away,

But he’s living his dream every day.

From Willow to Nome

race dogs race

ole the place youll go

zoom!!!!

eliminate

Nome !!!!

Keanna

by Stephen

In

Alaska

the iditarod

race is the race

that takes skill and

and hard work and that’s

the iditarod race in Alaska!

Dogs

on the

go!

By Naydia

RACE TO

ALASKA! LOTS OF

CHALLENGES!

EAGER TO WIN!

By  WILSON

MUSHER

UNBEATABLE

SLED

HIGH

ENERGIZE

RUN

By Elijah

slip

listen

equipment

dogs

obstacles

go

snow

By Cameron

Awake

Lose

Alaska

Sled

Killed

Away

by Cody

Disgusting

In a deadly

Position. People

Had

To

Help

Each other for

Recovery

In

Alaska

Jean Paul

Run

Alaska

Challenged

Elements

By   Emmanuel

Noah

Go

mushers

tell your

dog to

run run run so

you can win the

race.

Dogs love

Other people to

Go

Sledding

Jaime

Race

a fun

careful

east s race

Elizabeth

MUST

U AND ME

SEE

HIM

END THE

RACE

Nathan

Races

Alaska

Challenges

Eligible

Makayla

Brave

Risk

Achievement

Victory

Achieve

Parth

GOOD

READY

ELEGANT

ALASKA

TRAIL

RIDE

ANIMALS

CRASH

ELEGANT

BY Thomas

Race to

Alaska there will be

Challenges and it will be an

Elegant ride.

Marcus

To

Have

Even

Such

Outstanding

Unstoppable

Tremendous

Host

Race

Attitude

Checkpoint

Entertained

Jarred

My class annually follows the Iditarod. We put up a map and bulletin board in the hallway at our school so that all of the students in our small school can follow along. Each student chooses one musher to follow. We track the mushers each day and log on to the Insider each day for video clips and updates. I integrate the Iditarod curriculum throughout all of my subjectsfor the two-three weeks that the race is on and beyond. I use Iditarod curriculum that I purchased and the educational ideas from this website. We end with a letter-writing project and have a celebration to cap it all off.

I have used Iditarod as a tool in the classroom for ten years.

Last year, as a class we contacted Laura Daugereau, and she agreed to come to our school after the race. She gave a fabulous talk to the children! They were thrilled to have this first hand account of someone who accomplished something so great as to run the Iditarod. We made a quilt to honor her for being the first woman from Washington State to run and complete the Iditarod. I have included two pictures. Hope you enjoy them.

R.R. Wright

Washington

Diane,

Many late Hellos!!  This letter has been a year and a half in the making….maybe more.  Your email about using the Iditarod experience is coming back to you.  As a shop teacher, I was always looking for a way to include the experience in my life in my classes.  Well so far, I’ve found two ways.

One-  the current teacher from our school…. his/her students get to make a dog bone from a template that I made.  The students then choose which dog name they like from the list we get from the musher’s team that our current teacher is riding with as an Idita Rider at the start of the race.   Students  paint the name on the bone and have it as a keepsake.

Two- I was  looking for a way to include           students 8th grade through 12th in a long term project and came up with the idea of a totem pole.  I said to myself, if I am going to ask the students to try this idea out, maybe I should try to do it first.  You know, to check out where the construction problems may lie in wait and have solutions ready at hand.  My idea was something 12 inches high and 3 inches in diameter with proper base…. something they could have enough space to car on…. something that would be meaningful to them and not just a memento from their school years here, though it could be.

So, of course, me being me, I made a totem pole almost three feet high and over 5 inches in diameter not including the wings.  7 pieces glued together, blocked.. planed the corners down to round the pole out… made 2 eight-sided end pieces screwed in to allow for moving the pole in the direction you need to carve,  draw the items on the pole, carve them out…. then paint everything after taking off the end pieces and adding the final base.  It too a year and a half to complete the project.  As you can see by the pictures, I added the eagle head and the wings after finishing the pole portion mainly because I, at first, liked it the way it was, but then I saw that it needed something to really complete the totem.   The eagle head and wings were just the thing!

I hope that you can see that these examples are a labor of love.  Our time there with you, at the conference, with the Burmeisters, and the whole Iditarod Race and continuing story will always be with us.  Fate willing, some day we will return.

As ever,

Pete M

Pete teaches at a school in MA.  He and his wife, Peggy, attended the 2007  Iditarod Teacher’s Conference in Alaska.  Each year, a teacher from their school attends the conference and is an Idita Rider at the start of the race.

By Laurie Nakauchi-Hawn, Finalist for Target® 2009 Iditarod Teacher on the Trail^TM

First Grade, Friends’ School Boulder

With the Iditarod coming up, my first grade class has been studying the people and animals of the arctic. As a way for students to learn more about arctic animals and the Athabaskans, we made totem poles.

First, to introduce the animals of the arctic, we read Animals of the Tundra by Richard Vaughan. The children were fascinated by the variety of arctic animals. We discussed the adaptations that enable these animals to live in the icy arctic. Once the students were familiar with the animals, I brought in photos of totem poles and we talked about the significance of the totems and     animals represented on them.  We also talked about why Inuits would not make totems like the Northwest Coast Indians.

The children were excited to create their own totems. Using wrapping paper tubes, construction paper, crayons, scissors and glue; each child made a totem pole with the image of an arctic animal.

As a follow-up activity each child will identify the specific adaptations of the animal(s) on the totem.

CLICK HERE!
Hey Hobo Jim! This class would enjoy singing on stage with you sometime!

One of the writing pieces they completed was the diamante poem format to reinforce identity of cause/effect relationships.

Line 1: Poem topic (the cause)

Line 2: Two adjectives about the cause/topic

Line 3: Three -ing words about the cause/topic

Line 4: Four nouns or a short phrase linking the cause/topic with its effect

Line 5: Three -ing words about the effect

Line 6: Two adjectives about the effect

Line 7: The effect

Diphtheria

bad, terrible

spreading, killing, dying

Disease kills; dog’s relay

sledding, mushing, delivering

fast, cold

dog race

Diphtheria broke out in Nome, killing many people,

so they held a dog sled relay race to get the serum for diphtheria there.

Leah S

Serum

for Diphtheria is needed

scary, deadly

killing, terrifying, spreading

Mushers must have a relay.

willing, helping, needing

important, life-saving

The serum is delivered!

Diphtheria breaks out in Nome and serum is delivered from 800 miles.

Dakota P

The ice breaks

and Balto’s feet get wet

worried, threatening

fracturing, freezing, frightening

Balto’s paws; Gunnar’s hands

rushing, rubbing, reacting

relieved, encouraging

Gunnar rubs Balto’s paws in

the powdery snow

to keep them from

freezing.

Balto’s feet got wet from the ice breaking and were in danger of freezing,

so Gunnar rubbed Balto’s feet in the powdery snow.

Jessica T

The sled slipped

and slid on the ice.

slick, slippery

worrying, falling, wobbling

Gunnar, medicine, snow, sled

panicing, devastating, terrifying

scary, breathtaking

Gunnar lost the

medicine.

The sled slipped and slid on the ice, so Gunnar lost the medicine.

Ellis W

The ice cracks.

freezing, unlucky

frustrating, exhausting, pacing

team stops to warm feet.

rubbing, tiring, saving

friendly, moral

Gunnar stopped to warm

Balto’s paws.

Brett L

Students used “TOGO” by Robert Blake, and then “Balto” by Natalie Standiford to further identify and describe characters and understand the history of the Iditarod. The students’ narrative poems were written to the following given defined characterization descriptions:

1. Character’s name
2. Two words describing the character
3. Three words phrase describing the setting
4. Four-word phrase stating the problem
5. Five-word phrase describing one event
6. Six-word phrase describing another event
7. Seven-word phrase describing a third event
8. Eight-word phrase describing a solution to the problem.

Balto

Energetic, determined

Nome, Alaska-1925

People have diphtheria disease.

Townspeople discuss the diphtheria problem.

Announcement gets put on the radio.

Sled dogs get sent out for Serum.

Gunnar gets the serum to everybody in time!

Leah S

Balto

Courageous, skilled

In Nome, Alaska

Get serum to Nome.

The Safety Point was deserted.

Balto and Gunnar saved the town.

The serum was given to the sick.

The serum cured the disease gotten there.

Rosalia L

Balto

Perservering, malamute

Harsh Alaska, 1925

Two children have diphtheria.

Twenty-one dog teams including Balto’s

A big blizzard came but mushers proceeded.

He slipped, fell, and lost the serum.

Balto was a hero when he delivered serum.

Jordan E

Balto

Trustworthy, strong

January 1925, Nome

Diphtheria outbreak in Nome

Balto is Gunnar’s lead dog.

Hand-off driver wasn’t at the checkpoint.

Diphtheria outbreak requires serum; stuck in Anchorage.

Balto gets to Nome and people are cured.

Mark K

A Student Essay By Mariah

The Iditarod is a 1,000 mile race in Alaska. This doesn’t sound like a way to learn to me, or at least it didn’t before last year. My fifth grade teacher made it into one of the best ways to learn for most in my class. She made little math booklets for us, and in these books we did math problems that had to do with the Iditarod or Alaska. Trust me; if you have the right teacher the Iditarod is always a way of learning all of the school standards.

Some other ways that she taught us about the Iditarod and covered our state standards are we did a writing assignment about if we were an Alaskan Husky and wanted to race in the Iditarod but our musher picked other dogs what would we say to convince him/her to take us. Some of these writings were shown on the news! Another way was she had us make dog treats. With the ingredients and the amounts of the ingredients needed to make the treats we did a paper with adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing the different fractions for the recipe. One other thing that we did was we calculated how much calories a racing dog needs a day and then we went on the internet and looked to see what foods we would have to eat to equal the amount of calories the dogs ate.

One of my favorite things that we did was our musher tracking booklets. We had to keep track of our musher’s place everyday, kept track of the weather in Fort Wayne and Alaska to see the difference between the temperatures, and did a biography of our musher all in the same book. My musher’s name was Ellen Halverson. She won the Red Lantern Award, which is awarded to the last place team.

After the Iditarod was over, we did a report on anything that interested us. My love for dogs became stronger after our whole Iditarod experience. I decided to do a report over something that had to do with dogs. The Iditarod drove me to do a report over some kind of dog race. I chose the Yukon Quest; this race isn’t as popular as the Iditarod but it was still a dog race. This led me to want a dog so bad that I, later, got one in August. The Iditarod had a huge impact on my whole life.

In conclusion, the Iditarod is, in fact, a dog sled race, but it’s also a way to learn many things. My teacher made it that way, anyways. The Iditarod can affect many people’s lives in many different ways.

It really is a small world. Here I am in Wasilla, Alaska, thousands of miles from where I live and I meet another soul from Western North Carolina who has come north to experience the magic of the Iditarod.

My name is Cathy Walters and I am one of three finalists for the 2009 Target® Iditarod Teacher on the Trail^TM. Today I and many other teachers and race fans went to Iditarod Headquarters in Wasilla to attend what is commonly referred to as the “vet check.” The Iditarod has set the highest standards of health care based on research studies for all the competing canine athletes. To be eligible to participate in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race every athlete must be permanently identified with a microchip, have up to date blood testing, and an ECG. Ten days prior to the start of the race each dog must be dewormed and then they are ready for their last physical before they hit the trail. This service is provided free of charge to the approximately 100 teams, each starting the race with sixteen dogs. How can the Iditarod provide this service to hundreds and hundreds of dogs? There is only one way: Volunteers.

Every year veterinarians, men and women, from all over the United States and several other countries volunteer to come to Alaska for two weeks to help make sure that these mushing athletes get the best of care prior to and during the race. There are 43 vets volunteering this year under the supervision of Stuart Nelson, DVM. Bill Sampson from Burnsville, North Carolina is one of them. He lives just 30 miles from my home in Asheville! Today Bill is assessing the health of the four-legged athletes. In this exam he is listening to their hearts, checking paws and joints, and taking temperatures. The dogs are also scanned to make sure their microchip is in place. When the examine is finished and the paper work complete the dogs are given approval to compete in the 2008 Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race. But Bill’s job is far from over.

Once the Iditarod begins, Bill and the other volunteer veterinarians will “leapfrog” along the trail. For the first few checkpoints there will be six or seven vets to check the dogs. As the race progresses and there are greater distances between teams, the vets will be flown to new checkpoints. There will be an average of 3-4 per checkpoint. Out on the trail Bill will check the dogs to make sure they are in race condition. He will check the dogs to see that they are keeping their appetite and maintaining body weight. Heart rates and rhythms, as well as the dog’s lungs are checked for any signs of stress. All of this will be recorded in the Vet Books that the Iditarod Trail Committee requires each driver to carry. This recording system has been very successful in maintaining good health and safety for the dogs. Dr. Nelson told me that over the course of the race these amazing volunteers complete 12,000 routine exams! That figure represents many hours of service.

Thank you Stuart, Bill, and all of the volunteer veterinarians for doing your part to once again make the Iditarod happen. Your generous, loving care for these dogs helps make the Iditarod “The Last Great Race on Earth.”

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