THE ICEFJORD CENTRE

PAGE BY PAGE GUIDE –

THE BOOK CREATOR BOOK “LIFE IN THE SETTLEMENTS”

The students meet the Icefjord Centre in two pictures, showing summer and winter respectively.

In class you can talk about:

• What the Icefjord Centre is.
• What the surroundings around the Centre look like.
• The difference between summer and winter.
• How summer and winter differ where you live.

Talk about the map and about how many people live in Ilulissat and how many people live in the town or settlement where you live.

The students see part of a world map.

The task now is to move the red marker down into the map in order to show where each student lives.

The marker is found in the white box and can be drawn into the map.

In class you can talk about:

• Differences and similarities between Ilulissat and your own town or settlement.

The students are to research different facts about Greenland. On pages 12-15 there are eight pictures belonging to the questions below. On page 13 there is a link to this homepage from greenland-travel.dk, where the students can look for knowledge.

The students record their answers as an audio file and place the icon by the speech balloon that fits their answer.

Questions

• How many km² is Greenland?
• How many inhabitants are there in Greenland?
• Approximately how many people live in the settlements?
• On which side of Greenland are the six largest towns situated?
• What are the names of these towns in Greenlandic?
  • Thule
  • Godthåb
  • Scoresbysund
  • Sukkertoppen

Questions you can use if you want to differentiate:

• How many times is Greenland bigger than Denmark?
• Why are the six largest towns placed on the west coast?
• Is there a historical reason for the Danish names of the Greenlandic towns?

Insertion of audio files: see instruction 1 here.

Now it is time for the students to listen to the podcast Life in the Settlements. They find the podcast by clicking on the picture on page 16.

Before the students listen to the podcast, you can give a short introduction to the contents of the podcast.

Katrine tells:

• that for thousands of years people have met by the Disko Bay to hunt, trade and exchange culture and knowledge.
• that people went into the fjords to summer settlements to hunt and fish (reindeer, trout and halibut).
• about the winter settlement, Sermermiut, of which you can see the ruins just south of the Icefjord Centre.
• that even though many people have moved to Ilulissat, several of them still have a hut in the settlement they come from.

Ole tells:

• that almost every Greenlander has his or her roots in a settlement and that this is the reason why the settlements have a special status.
• that the state up through the 50s and 60s closed down many settlements, but that this does not happen any more.
• that he grew up in the settlement of Oqaatsut, but as a 9 year old moved to Ilulissat because of better schools and better prospects for the future. At that time, 50 years ago, approximately 200 people lived in Oqaatsut, but now only 30 people live there
• that it is hard work to live in the settlement. Everything is done by manpower. The wheelbarrow is the most important means of transportation. Here there are no cars.
• that in the settlement there is a power plant – a waterworks – a municipal office – a small wash house – a small health centre – a small church that also functions as a school.
• that you are dependent on having a boat, sled dogs or a snow scooter to get around.
• that he runs a hotel in the settlement, the place where he has his roots.
• that he enjoys the special settlement atmosphere, the view of the Icefjord. This is where he relaxes.

It is recommended that the students listen in pairs or small groups.

Let the students spend a few minutes discussing what they have heard in the podcast.

On page 17 the students are to record small audio files where they tell about the podcast. The pictures on the page will help them remember what they have heard.

Insertion of audio files: see instruction 1 here.

The recording will now be represented by a small sound icon. This icon can be placed wherever you wish on the page. You can listen to the recording over and over again.

Review in class

We recommend that you have a joint discussion in class when the work with pages 16-17 is finished.

It is a good idea that you write concepts and keywords on the board while you discuss.

In class you could talk about:

• Ole says that the state has shut down many settlements up through the 50s and 60s – for what reason do you think?
• Why did Ole move to the larger town, Iliulissat, when he was 9 years old?

In the text below you can find inspiration for the class discussion.

For some of the concepts there are pages with tasks in the Book Creator book.

If you wish, you can add more pages for other topics, concepts and keywords that you discuss.

Concepts and keywords

• settlement – a settlement is a smaller habitation than a town. In Denmark it is called a village. In order to get to a Greenlandic settlement, you must either use a boat, a dog sledge or a helicopter. In Greenland there are over 60 settlements. A number of these are not inhabited. Between 30 to 250 people live in the inhabited settlements.

How can you get to the villages where you live?

• Disko Bay – is the largest bay in Greenland. Among other things you find Ilulissat by the bay, which is where the podcast takes place. Today it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Greenland. It is an unbelievably beautiful area with the enormous floating icebergs, the rich wildlife and especially the many whales. This is also where you can experience the hunter life of the small settlements. Even though hunting and fishing still are the main livelihood for in the Disko Bay, the service professions are growing in connection with the expanding tourism.

What could be an example of a service profession?

Why do you think it is called “Disko Bay”?

Here are some concepts that are not mentioned in the podcast, but could be relevant in connection with solving the tasks:

• Food chain – an overview of which animals eat other animals. A food chain always starts with some kind of primary producer (a plant that can make a photosynthesis) and then comes a herbivore and finally a carnivore.

Can you give an example of a food chain that starts with grass?

• Biological systematics – is a scientific method used to classify species. In this way you can show which species are related to each other. We are for example closely related to many monkeys, so our family is “apes”.

Do you know other species in the homo-family? For example H. Erectus or H. Neanderthalensis?

• Eukaryote – in biological systematics you categorise forms of life into two groups – the organisms that have a cell nucleus and those who do not have a cell nucleus. “Eu” means genuine and “karyote” means nucleus. If an organism does not have a cell nucleus, you call it a prokaryote. Prokaryotes do not have a cell nucleus, e.g. bacteria. Prokaryotes considered the oldest form of life, that later on has developed into being eukaryotic, that is into having a cell nucleus.

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

On these pages the students write short descriptions of keywords and concepts that you have been through up till now. They can write them, record them as an audio file or make a drawing and insert the picture. Their products will be part of the further work with the podcast. While working with the next pages, please give the students the opportunity to develop their reference book and also add new knowledge as they go along.

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

The students are to research some of the animals that Ole mentions in the podcast.

They are to find information and facts about the halibut, the codfish and the Greenland shark.They can find information about the animals on this homepage from visitgreenland.com, on page 20.

They decide themselves what they want to focus on and they can also search for knowledge on other websites on the internet.

In the black boxes on pages 18-19 they write down their newly acquired knowledge and they insert a picture of the animal in the white box placed above the black facts box.

When everyone is finished, you make a joint review in class where you go through what they have found out. Here are some suggestions for the review:

• Did you find out anything that you did not know already?
• Did you find knowledge about other animals than the three animals from pages 20-21?
• How old or big can the animals become?
• What do the animals eat? (you could try making a food chain with the animals)

Insertion of pictures and insertion of text: see instruction 2 og 3 here.

The students will now work with biological systematics.

Pages 22-23 are to be used for a review in class, whereas pages 24-25 are tasks for the students.

On pages 22-23 there is a text about the Greenland shark that the students read. There are also three blue boxes. In the first box on page 22 there is an overview of how you build up a biological system. Talk with the students about how you can classify all forms of life in a system. Talk with them about whether they know some of these concepts already. Go through the different concepts with the students. You can find more knowledge here.

In the two other boxes you can see how you place the Greenland shark and man in a biological system. Here the students can see that man is related to the Greenland shark as both species are vertebrates.

Here are some suggestions to the joint discussion in class:

• Why are both the Greenland shark and man placed in the row with vertebrates?
• Are both of them primates?
• Which family does man belong to?
• Which family does the Greenland shark belong to?

On pages 24-25 the students are to find out which of the four species are closer related to man than the Greenland shark is. They should solve the task in small groups. They can colour the boxes that hold a species closer to man, green.

Make a joint review in class with the students’ answers.

Here are some suggestions for the joint review:

• Which animals are closer related to man?
• What does mammal mean?
• Do you know any other apes than chimpanzees?
• Do you know where the different animals on pages 24-25 live?

Now the students will work with the quite special atmosphere of the settlement described in the podcast. On pages 26-27 they are to research what characterises a settlement and on pages 28-29 they will work with Ole’s hotel, Hotel Nordlys, and produce a commercial/advertisement for the hotel.

Pages 26-27

On these pages the students work with the settlement atmosphere.

On page 26 there is a text and a picture from Oqaatsut. Let the students read the text and discuss it and the picture in pairs.

On page 27 there is a link to this homepage from visitgreenland.com. Here the students find information about everyday life in the settlement of Oqaatsut. They can use their knowledge from the homepage and the podcast to answer the question: What is it that characterises the quite special life in a settlement that Ole describes?

There is a box inserted where they can write their answer, a figure where they can record an audio file and a frame where they can insert a picture. They decide for themselves what they want to focus on and how they want to answer the question. They are free to delete either the box, the figure or the frame if they do not need them.

Pages 28-29

On page 28-29 the students work with Hotel Nordlys.

They are to imagine that they have been hired to produce a commercial or advertisement for Hotel Nordlys. On page 29 there is a link to the hotel’s homepage.    They are to research what the hotel offers and what you can experience while staying there. They can also use their knowledge from the work with pages 26-27. 

Framework for working with the commercial/advertisement:

• The advertisement/commercial must focus on Hotel Nordlys.
• It must be clear what you can experience and what the hotel offers
• It is optional whether you want to make a commercial, a poster, a song or make use of some other media.
• You must be able to argue for your choice of media.

The students present their product to the class. See under “Evaluation” for further information about the framework for this presentation.

Insertion of audio files, insertion of pictures, insertion of text and insertion of videos: see instructions 1, 2, 3, and 5 here.

The students show their products to the class. 

Make sure that the framework for feedback is positive criticism.The students should be supported in assessing what is good – and what might be done better. Find more inspiration here.

Not specifically with a view to making new products, but foremost to let the students discover and work with this kind of constructive and positive criticism.

If you intend to work with some of the other podcasts from the Icefjord Centre, it might make sense to save the students’ Book Creator book, so the work they have done with it can be used again.

If you wish to let the students make use of the feedback they have received from the class, you could reserve time for them to continue their work with their products. So that they can use the feedback they have received from each other and change things in their product.

The podcast Life in the Settlements has been created by the Icefjord Centre in Ilulissat.

The teaching material for the podcast Life in the Settlements has been developed by Lotte Brinkmann and Daniella Maria Manuel, Anholt Læringsværksted with feedback from Leg med IT.

The student’s book in Book Creator has been developed as a part of the project Nutaaliorta from Kivitsisa. The template has been developed by Rikke Falkenberg Kofoed and Daniella Maria Manuel from Leg med IT.

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.