LIFE IN THE SETTLEMENTS

UNDERVISNINGSMATERIALE TIL GYMNASIUM

Life in the settlements is one out of nine podcasts produced by Katrine Nyland for The Icefjord Centre in Ilulissat.

Guide to the Book Creator book

The Book Creator book Life in the Settlements is a student’s book associated with the podcast Life in the Settlements.

The duration of the podcast is 3:53.

The activities have been designed to focus on the students’ investigative, experimental and creative approach to learning.

The process consists of three steps:

  • Preparation before listening to the podcast.
  • Listening to and working with the podcast.
  • Further work with topics and insights from the podcast.

We recommend that you listen to the podcast before presenting it to the students.

ABOUT THE MATERIAL

Cross-curricular – science with focus on biology, and language

  • The students acquire knowledge of the development in the settlements from a hunting culture to tourism.
  • They learn about the close relationship you get to the settlement you come from.
  • They practise their skills in communication and collaboration.

We recommend that students work in small groups, pairs or individually. Depending on what suits each student best and the competences to be developed. Keep in mind that your best friend is not necessarily the one you collaborate best with. Working together is about working together and not just being together.

Guide to the Book Creator book

The Book Creator book Life in the Settlements is a student’s book associated with the podcast Life in the Settlements.

The duration of the podcast is 3:53.

The activities have been designed to focus on the students’ investigative, experimental and creative approach to learning.

The process consists of three steps:

  • Preparation before listening to the podcast.
  • Listening to and working with the podcast.
  • Further work with topics and insights from the podcast.

We recommend that you listen to the podcast before presenting it to the students.

ABOUT THE MATERIAL

Cross-curricular – science with focus on biology, and language

  • The students acquire knowledge of the development in the settlements from a hunting culture to tourism.
  • They learn about the close relationship you get to the settlement you come from.
  • They practise their skills in communication and collaboration.

We recommend that students work in small groups, pairs or individually. Depending on what suits each student best and the competences to be developed. Keep in mind that your best friend is not necessarily the one you collaborate best with. Working together is about working together and not just being together.

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00:00

Livet i bygderne

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00:00

Nunaqarfinni inuuneq

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00:00

Life in the settlements

PAGE BY PAGE GUIDE FOR THE BOOK CREATOR BOOK “LIFE IN THE SETTLEMENTS”

The students meet the Icefjord Centre in four pictures: summer and winter, the Kangia glacier front and the framework of the building. On page 6-7 there is a text and three videos (in Danish) showing the erection of the Icefjord Centre.

In class you can talk about:

  • What the Icefjord Centre is.
  • What the purpose of an institution like the Icefjord Centre is.
  • What it looks like around the centre.
  • The difference between summer and winter, where you live as well as in Greenland.

The students should clarify what they already know about Greenland before starting work on the podcast. In this podcast focus is on the hunting and fishing culture in Ilulissat but you may have worked with some of the other podcasts or in other ways acquired knowledge that can be activated in advance.

On page 8 there is a link to Google Maps. Here the students can try to locate the Icefjord Centre on the map.

You can also experiment with letting them find the places mentioned in the podcast, so that they get an idea of where they are situated. These are the places:

  • Ilulissat
  • Oqaatsut
  • The Icefjord

Furthermore, on page 8 there are four questions to help the students get going. Here are suggestions for a few more:

  • How many people live in Greenland?
  • What is the area of Greenland?
  • What do you know about the inland ice?
  • Which languages are spoken in Greenland?

Page 9 is intended for answers. The students are free to use whatever form of expression they prefer. Some possibilities in Book Creator:

  • make a model/a drawing by hand, take a picture of it and insert
  • find pictures in Book Creator about Greenland and insert them. The pictures can be complemented with explanations in words.
  • record an audio file telling what you know about Greenland
  • – or a combination of the above

On page 10-11 you find a map of Greenland, with six red markers. Let the students place the markers where they know towns or settlements in Greenland. They can write the name of the town or settlement in the field next to the marker.

Sound recording, insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 1, 2 and 3 here.

Now it is time for the students to listen to the podcast Life in the settlements. On page 12 an introduction to the podcast is given, followed by a short instruction. Clicking the picture on page 13 will start the podcast.

It is recommended that the students listen in pairs or small groups. After listening to the podcast, the students could spend some minutes talking about what they just heard.

On page 14-15 the students are to make a summary of what they heard in the podcast. They may do this in various ways:

  • write a text
  • record an audio file
  • make a model/drawing
  • something completely different that they are used to with note taking methods and summaries
  • – or a combination of the above

Sound recording, insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 1, 2 and 3 here.

Now it is time for a joint review in class where the students’ work on pages 14 and 15 is discussed. The aim is to prepare the students for making their own reference books that they can revisit during work with the podcast. In this reference book the students should explain the meaning of the concepts and keywords from your discussion – by means of text, sound, pictures, drawings or a combination of these.

You could begin by asking the students to name the concepts and keywords they heard in the podcast. Then you can add those mentioned below, central to the podcast and important for further work.

  • Settlement – a smaller place than a town, fewer inhabitants. Like a village. To get to a Greenlandic settlement you have to use boat, dog sledge or helicopter.
    In Greenland there are more than 60 settlements. Several of them are uninhabited. Between 30 and 250 people live in those that are inhabited. 

How do you get to villages and settlements where you live?

  • The Disko Bay – the largest bay in Greenland. At the bay lies Ilulissat where the podcast takes place. Today this is one of Greenland’s most popular tourist destinations. It is an incredibly beautiful area with the enormous floating icebergs, the rich wildlife and especially the many whales. Here you can also experience small settlements with their hunting culture.
    Even though hunting and especially fishing still is the basis for life in the Disko Bay, service trades gain more and more ground with the growing tourism.

What is an example of a service trade?

Why is the bay called the Disko Bay?

Here are some concepts not mentioned in the podcast, but relevant when solving the tasks.

  • Food chain – is a sequence of organisms feeding on other organisms. A food chain always begins with some kind of primary producer, a plant performing photosynthesis, and next usually comes a herbivore and finally a carnivore.

Can you give an example of a food chain, beginning with grass?

  • Biological systematics – is a scientific way to classify species. The system shows which species are related. Humans are closely related to many apes, so humans are classified with apes as belonging to the family of Hominidae.

 Do you know any other species in the homo genus? Like H. erectus or H. neanderthalensis?

  • Eukaryote – in biological systematics life is classified according to the presence or absence of a cell nucleus. “Eu” means real, and “karyote” means kernel. If an organism does not have a cell nucleus, it is called a prokaryote. Bacteria are an example. Prokaryotes are the oldest form of life; they later developed into having a cell nucleus, became eukaryotes.

Do you know any kind of cells in the human body?

Sound recording, insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 1, 2 and 3 here.

The students now look into some settlements in Greenland, working in groups. The task is introduced on page 18, and each group is assigned one of the nine settlements from page 20-21. A link is provided on page 19 where the students can find information about their settlement.

They are to find out this:

  • is the settlement located in North or South Greenland?
  • how many inhabitants does the settlement have?
  • what can you experience there?
  • how do you get to the settlement?
  • does anything in particular distinguish this settlement? Like: is the area included in UNESCO’s world heritage list, are there stories from ancient times or anything else of interest.

Page 22-23 has a text box, a frame for a picture and an icon where an audio file can be placed. The students choose whether they will use all three means in their presentation of the settlement. They may delete or add boxes and frames as needed.

Each group presents their settlement to the rest of the class.

Sound recording, insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 1, 2 and 3 here.

There have always lived many people in Oqaatsut because of the resources in the area, Ole tells in the podcast. The students will take a look at some of the game animals that Ole mentions: Greenland halibut, cod and Greenland shark. Information about these fish can be found on this homepage from VISIT Greenland (link on page 25).

What aspects the students want to emphasize is their own choice, and they should be encouraged to seek further information elsewhere on the Internet. They write their newly found knowledge in the black boxes on page 25, and insert pictures of the fish in the white boxes.

When the job is done, you hold a joint review of the results in class. Here some suggestions:

  • Did you find out something you did not know before?
  • Did you learn something about other animals besides these three fish?
  • How old or big can they become?
  • What do the fish eat? You might try to make a food chain with them in it.

Insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 2 and 3 here.

The subject is biological systematics. Page 26-27 is intended for a joint discussion in class, whereas page 28-29 is a task for the students.

On page 26-27 the Greenland shark is described. And there are three blue boxes. The first one gives an outline or structure of a biological taxonomy. Talk with the students about how all living organisms can be classified systematically. Hear if they already know some of these concepts. Explain the concepts to the students. Much useful information can be found on the Internet.

The other two boxes show how the Greenland shark and humans are classified in the system. Here the students can see that humans have some relationship to the Greenland shark as both species are vertebrates.

Some suggestions for the discussion in class:

  • Now that both the Greenland shark and humans are vertebrates, would you say that they are close to each other in the phylogenetic tree?
  • There are two main classes of fish: cartilaginous fish and bony fish. What does “cartilaginous fish” mean?
  • Are there any animals living in the sea that do not belong to the class fish?

On page 28-29 the students are to determine which of the four species are more closely related to humans than to the Greenland shark. The task should be solved in small groups. They could colour the boxes green that contain a species closer to humans than to the Greenland shark.

Hold a joint review in class over the answers. Here some suggestions:

  • Which animals are closer related to humans?
  • What does “mammal” mean?
  • Do you know any other apes than the chimpanzee?
  • Where do the animals on page 28-29 live?
  • What other domains are there, besides eukaryote?
  • What other kingdoms are there, besides the animal kingdom?
  • What does “evolution” mean?
  • Do you know any examples of evolution?
    • Here you might include an example of evolution in fish. Research has shown that fishing makes cod shrimp. Because the biggest fish get caught in the net, being small is an advantage. Source: PNAS.

When work with these pages is finished, the students should spend some time updating their reference book and add the new concepts they have learned.

The students should imagine that they have been hired to produce a commercial or an advertisement for Hotel Nordlys. On page 27 a link is given to the homepage of the hotel. The students are to use this to find out what the hotel offers, and what you can experience when staying there.

Guidelines:

  • The advertisement/commercial must focus on the stay at Hotel Nordlys.
  • It should be made very clear what you can experience, and what the hotel offers.
  • It is up to the students if they will make a film, a poster, a song, or use some other medium.
  • You should be able to argue for your choice of medium.

The advertisement/commercial is placed on page 28-29.

The students present their products to the class. On the settings of feedback, see Evaluation below.

Sound recording and insertion of pictures: see instructions 1 and 2 here.

Make sure that the settings for feedback are positive criticism. The students should be supported in assessing: what is good – and what might be done better. Find more inspiration in Austin’s Butterfly.  The idea with this is not necessarily to make new products but rather for the students to discover and work with this positive criticism. You could, though, choose to allocate time for further work with the products, so that the students might use the feedback for changes and improvements.

If you intend to work with some of the other podcasts from the Icefjord Centre it would make sense to save the students’ Book Creator books so that they may be reused.

The podcast Life in the settlements was made for the Icefjord Centre in Ilulissat by Katrine Nyland.

Graphics by Oncotype.

Teaching material for the podcast has been produced by Lotte Brinkmann and Daniella Maria Manuel, Anholt Læringsværksted.

The teaching material Life in the settlements is published under a Creative Commons crediting licence CC:BY. The texts, assignments and pictures can be shared, reproduced and adapted, with the proviso that “Life in the settlements by the Icefjord Centre Ilulissat” is credited as the source.

PAGE BY PAGE GUIDE FOR THE BOOK CREATOR BOOK “LIFE IN THE SETTLEMENTS”

The students meet the Icefjord Centre in four pictures: summer and winter, the Kangia glacier front and the framework of the building. On page 6-7 there is a text and three videos (in Danish) showing the erection of the Icefjord Centre.

In class you can talk about:

  • What the Icefjord Centre is.
  • What the purpose of an institution like the Icefjord Centre is.
  • What it looks like around the centre.
  • The difference between summer and winter, where you live as well as in Greenland.

The students should clarify what they already know about Greenland before starting work on the podcast. In this podcast focus is on the hunting and fishing culture in Ilulissat but you may have worked with some of the other podcasts or in other ways acquired knowledge that can be activated in advance.

On page 8 there is a link to Google Maps. Here the students can try to locate the Icefjord Centre on the map.

You can also experiment with letting them find the places mentioned in the podcast, so that they get an idea of where they are situated. These are the places:

  • Ilulissat
  • Oqaatsut
  • The Icefjord

Furthermore, on page 8 there are four questions to help the students get going. Here are suggestions for a few more:

  • How many people live in Greenland?
  • What is the area of Greenland?
  • What do you know about the inland ice?
  • Which languages are spoken in Greenland?

Page 9 is intended for answers. The students are free to use whatever form of expression they prefer. Some possibilities in Book Creator:

  • make a model/a drawing by hand, take a picture of it and insert
  • find pictures in Book Creator about Greenland and insert them. The pictures can be complemented with explanations in words.
  • record an audio file telling what you know about Greenland
  • – or a combination of the above

On page 10-11 you find a map of Greenland, with six red markers. Let the students place the markers where they know towns or settlements in Greenland. They can write the name of the town or settlement in the field next to the marker.

Sound recording, insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 1, 2 and 3 here.

Now it is time for the students to listen to the podcast Life in the settlements. On page 12 an introduction to the podcast is given, followed by a short instruction. Clicking the picture on page 13 will start the podcast.

It is recommended that the students listen in pairs or small groups. After listening to the podcast, the students could spend some minutes talking about what they just heard.

On page 14-15 the students are to make a summary of what they heard in the podcast. They may do this in various ways:

  • write a text
  • record an audio file
  • make a model/drawing
  • something completely different that they are used to with note taking methods and summaries
  • – or a combination of the above

Sound recording, insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 1, 2 and 3 here.

Now it is time for a joint review in class where the students’ work on pages 14 and 15 is discussed. The aim is to prepare the students for making their own reference books that they can revisit during work with the podcast. In this reference book the students should explain the meaning of the concepts and keywords from your discussion – by means of text, sound, pictures, drawings or a combination of these.

You could begin by asking the students to name the concepts and keywords they heard in the podcast. Then you can add those mentioned below, central to the podcast and important for further work.

  • Settlement – a smaller place than a town, fewer inhabitants. Like a village. To get to a Greenlandic settlement you have to use boat, dog sledge or helicopter.
    In Greenland there are more than 60 settlements. Several of them are uninhabited. Between 30 and 250 people live in those that are inhabited. 

How do you get to villages and settlements where you live?

  • The Disko Bay – the largest bay in Greenland. At the bay lies Ilulissat where the podcast takes place. Today this is one of Greenland’s most popular tourist destinations. It is an incredibly beautiful area with the enormous floating icebergs, the rich wildlife and especially the many whales. Here you can also experience small settlements with their hunting culture.
    Even though hunting and especially fishing still is the basis for life in the Disko Bay, service trades gain more and more ground with the growing tourism.

What is an example of a service trade?

Why is the bay called the Disko Bay?

Here are some concepts not mentioned in the podcast, but relevant when solving the tasks.

  • Food chain – is a sequence of organisms feeding on other organisms. A food chain always begins with some kind of primary producer, a plant performing photosynthesis, and next usually comes a herbivore and finally a carnivore.

Can you give an example of a food chain, beginning with grass?

  • Biological systematics – is a scientific way to classify species. The system shows which species are related. Humans are closely related to many apes, so humans are classified with apes as belonging to the family of Hominidae.

 Do you know any other species in the homo genus? Like H. erectus or H. neanderthalensis?

  • Eukaryote – in biological systematics life is classified according to the presence or absence of a cell nucleus. “Eu” means real, and “karyote” means kernel. If an organism does not have a cell nucleus, it is called a prokaryote. Bacteria are an example. Prokaryotes are the oldest form of life; they later developed into having a cell nucleus, became eukaryotes.

Do you know any kind of cells in the human body?

Sound recording, insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 1, 2 and 3 here.

The students now look into some settlements in Greenland, working in groups. The task is introduced on page 18, and each group is assigned one of the nine settlements from page 20-21. A link is provided on page 19 where the students can find information about their settlement.

They are to find out this:

  • is the settlement located in North or South Greenland?
  • how many inhabitants does the settlement have?
  • what can you experience there?
  • how do you get to the settlement?
  • does anything in particular distinguish this settlement? Like: is the area included in UNESCO’s world heritage list, are there stories from ancient times or anything else of interest.

Page 22-23 has a text box, a frame for a picture and an icon where an audio file can be placed. The students choose whether they will use all three means in their presentation of the settlement. They may delete or add boxes and frames as needed.

Each group presents their settlement to the rest of the class.

Sound recording, insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 1, 2 and 3 here.

There have always lived many people in Oqaatsut because of the resources in the area, Ole tells in the podcast. The students will take a look at some of the game animals that Ole mentions: Greenland halibut, cod and Greenland shark. Information about these fish can be found on this homepage from VISIT Greenland (link on page 25).

What aspects the students want to emphasize is their own choice, and they should be encouraged to seek further information elsewhere on the Internet. They write their newly found knowledge in the black boxes on page 25, and insert pictures of the fish in the white boxes.

When the job is done, you hold a joint review of the results in class. Here some suggestions:

  • Did you find out something you did not know before?
  • Did you learn something about other animals besides these three fish?
  • How old or big can they become?
  • What do the fish eat? You might try to make a food chain with them in it.

Insertion of pictures and text: see instructions 2 and 3 here.

The subject is biological systematics. Page 26-27 is intended for a joint discussion in class, whereas page 28-29 is a task for the students.

On page 26-27 the Greenland shark is described. And there are three blue boxes. The first one gives an outline or structure of a biological taxonomy. Talk with the students about how all living organisms can be classified systematically. Hear if they already know some of these concepts. Explain the concepts to the students. Much useful information can be found on the Internet.

The other two boxes show how the Greenland shark and humans are classified in the system. Here the students can see that humans have some relationship to the Greenland shark as both species are vertebrates.

Some suggestions for the discussion in class:

  • Now that both the Greenland shark and humans are vertebrates, would you say that they are close to each other in the phylogenetic tree?
  • There are two main classes of fish: cartilaginous fish and bony fish. What does “cartilaginous fish” mean?
  • Are there any animals living in the sea that do not belong to the class fish?

On page 28-29 the students are to determine which of the four species are more closely related to humans than to the Greenland shark. The task should be solved in small groups. They could colour the boxes green that contain a species closer to humans than to the Greenland shark.

Hold a joint review in class over the answers. Here some suggestions:

  • Which animals are closer related to humans?
  • What does “mammal” mean?
  • Do you know any other apes than the chimpanzee?
  • Where do the animals on page 28-29 live?
  • What other domains are there, besides eukaryote?
  • What other kingdoms are there, besides the animal kingdom?
  • What does “evolution” mean?
  • Do you know any examples of evolution?
    • Here you might include an example of evolution in fish. Research has shown that fishing makes cod shrimp. Because the biggest fish get caught in the net, being small is an advantage. Source: PNAS.

When work with these pages is finished, the students should spend some time updating their reference book and add the new concepts they have learned.

The students should imagine that they have been hired to produce a commercial or an advertisement for Hotel Nordlys. On page 27 a link is given to the homepage of the hotel. The students are to use this to find out what the hotel offers, and what you can experience when staying there.

Guidelines:

  • The advertisement/commercial must focus on the stay at Hotel Nordlys.
  • It should be made very clear what you can experience, and what the hotel offers.
  • It is up to the students if they will make a film, a poster, a song, or use some other medium.
  • You should be able to argue for your choice of medium.

The advertisement/commercial is placed on page 28-29.

The students present their products to the class. On the settings of feedback, see Evaluation below.

Sound recording and insertion of pictures: see instructions 1 and 2 here.

Make sure that the settings for feedback are positive criticism. The students should be supported in assessing: what is good – and what might be done better. Find more inspiration in Austin’s Butterfly.  The idea with this is not necessarily to make new products but rather for the students to discover and work with this positive criticism. You could, though, choose to allocate time for further work with the products, so that the students might use the feedback for changes and improvements.

If you intend to work with some of the other podcasts from the Icefjord Centre it would make sense to save the students’ Book Creator books so that they may be reused.

The podcast Life in the settlements was made for the Icefjord Centre in Ilulissat by Katrine Nyland.

Graphics by Oncotype.

Teaching material for the podcast has been produced by Lotte Brinkmann and Daniella Maria Manuel, Anholt Læringsværksted.

The teaching material Life in the settlements is published under a Creative Commons crediting licence CC:BY. The texts, assignments and pictures can be shared, reproduced and adapted, with the proviso that “Life in the settlements by the Icefjord Centre Ilulissat” is credited as the source.

NARRATIVES FROM ILULISSAT

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The dog lot

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Freedom and dangers

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The life-giving glacier

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Life as a hunter

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The town of the Greenland halibut

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A 22 rifle in the shopping trolley

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Life in the settlements

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The treasures of a Greenlandic freezer

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The light returns

CONTRIBUTORS

1. William & Niels Petersen  2. Ane Sofie & Flemming Lauritzen, Klaus Nordvig Andersen 3. Malik Niemann 4. Mikkel Petersen 5. Palle Jeremiassen, Mikkel Petersen, Lisa Helene Sap 6. William Petersen, Malik Niemann 7. Ole Dorph 8. Elin Andersen, Vera Mølgaard, Malik Niemann 9. Lisa Helene Sap

Production by Katrine Nyland & graphic artwork by Oncotype.

The project is funded by Nordea fonden.