Teacher's  Guide

Designed by Susan Seagraves
[email protected]

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/5924/index.html

Please feel free to modify this WebQuest to suit the individual needs of your students.

In this WebQuest students will:

• learn about the real-life adventure of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, its participants, and the qualities that are needed to be a successful Iditarod musher

• learn about the geography of Alaska
• learn about the wildlife of Alaska
• learn about the effects of extreme cold on humans
• increase vocabulary skills by learning race-related terminology
• improve writing skills through daily diary entries

Prior to beginning this unit, I highly recommend that you order one of the teacher's curriculum guides to the Iditarod available on the Iditarod 2000 Official Website.  Each student will need a diary to keep entries in.  You can make one or buy blank journals in which students post diary entries.

It is helpful to have something in the room to excite the students about the unit.  I like to have a large bulletin board with a map of the trail and pictures of the mushers and dog sledding.  All of these can be downloaded and printed out directly from the internet.  

In addition to this WebQuest I also have my students read the book Woodsong by Gary Paulson.  I think it exemplifies the true spirit of the Iditarod and is filled with information about what it is like to be a musher in the race.

This year I am going to add an Iditarod race simulation to our study.  I have divided the students into teams.  One student in each team will be the musher and the rest of the students will be "dogs."  The students are making their sleds out of mattress boxes.  Each musher will have to take supplies for the race - food, water bottles, booties (we are using surgical booties), and a journal.  We will lay out a course on the school's back field with the various stops of the Iditarod.  The "dogs" will pull the sled through the entire course.  "Dogs" may be exchanged and substituted at checkpoints.  Parents will help man the checkpoints just like they do in the official race.  We will have prizes for the teams and of course we will give out a Red Lantern award to the team coming in last place.   The students will help set up the course and will make bibs for themselves to wear during the race and will learn various mushing terms such as "gee" and "haw" which they will use during the race.

Online materials     

Books and videos for kids 

Iditarod Word Search     

Back to The Iditarod WebQuest

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