Each of us (that is Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science teachers) find ways to incorporate the Iditarod into lessons and activities. I want to share with you what takes place in my math class and hopefully ignite a spark for other teachers to try this unit too.
1. Race to Nome
This project was a new addition to our unit this year. My good friend and colleague, Laura Gilbert, is an amazing artist, so she made the map pictured below. Hand drawn on paper and attached to my magnetic whiteboard, it displays a map of the
Race to Nome Map created by Laura Gilbert |
Each student was given their own sled-dog magnet. This was a picture of a dog printed in color, laminated, cut out, and attached to a magnet. Students wrote their names on a sticky label on the front and we are hoping these will peel off and be able to reuse them next year. Here is a closer look at one of the dogs.
How do students earn miles as they race to Nome? The idea was that students needed to complete some short activities, usually reading a brief article and answering some questions, to earn miles. The more questions they completed and answered correctly, the closer they moved to their final destination. They needed to earn 4 miles to move from one checkpoint to the next, for a total of 100 miles to reach Nome. Students downloaded a document on their iPads, where they kept track of their answers. They used
What I really loved about this part of the project was that it was largely created by the students. In the two weeks leading up to the beginning of the race, we asked students to research the Iditarod in their technology class. They worked in small groups and were given the choice about what to focus their research on. We suggested topics such as
2. Fantasy Iditarod Team
Another fun and new activity this year - the Fantasy Iditarod team. In the past we've had students choose one rookie
Every couple of days we had students fill out a Fantasy Iditarod worksheet, writing their
We created a spreadsheet for students to use to fin
3. Daily Math Problem
At the beginning of each week, I emailed
Sometimes I added additional problems, like over the weekend or Spring Break. These were chances for students to earn some extra credit. If the problems were harder, I included some "hints" to help them get started in the right direction.
4. Men Vs. Women Pie Chart Poster
For a mini statistics project, we analyzed the percentage of men and women in the Iditarod race. We also wanted to see how this has changed over time, so we also determined the percentage of men and women from the Iditarod race 30 years ago.
In the past, I've had students gather this data on their own, by writing the name of each
This spreadsheet listed information about this year's race, so I did have students go to the Iditarod website and look at the race archives to gather the data for the race from 1985. Once we knew how many men and how many women were in the race for 1985 and 2015, we created a poster to share our data. Part of the criteria was for students to make 3 comments/observations - one about the raw numbers, one about the percentages, and a prediction for the race 30 years in the future. Here is the example I made to share with students.
Do you know what was really great about the Iditarod race from 30 years ago? Only 5 women were in the race, but it was won by a woman!
5. Statistics Project - Age of Mushers
We also completed a statistics project that covered most of the statistics standards for sixth grade by studying the age of the Iditarod mushers. Using the spreadsheet data above, we found the mean, median, mode, range, quartiles, and mean absolute deviation of the ages of the mushers . We used this data to create a dot plot, box plot, and a histogram .
I had students use a calculator to find the sum of all the mushers' ages. There were 79 mushers ! Believe me, they made many mistakes in adding all those numbers. But they kept on trying until they reached the magic number. Finally, I showed them how their Numbers spreadsheet will calculate all of these formulas for us, so we were able to check our work. They were pretty astonished at what can be done with a spreadsheet. I also taught students how to use the spreadsheet to create a Dot Plot and we used this website to create our Box Plot.
Here is a student example of the Age of Mushers project. I notice the Dot Plot doesn't look exactly like what we created in class. Something must have changed in the conversion process, but this is a good example of what we accomplished.
Click here to see the student example above
I hope you've enjoyed reading about some of the Iditarod projects we completed and possibly found some inspiration for your own classroom!