THE ICEFJORD CENTRE

PAGE BY PAGE GUIDE – THE BOOK CREATOR STUDENT’S BOOK “THE DOG LOT” 

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

In the classroom you can talk about:

• What the Icefjord Centre is.
• What it looks like around the centre.
• The difference between summer and winter.
• How summer and winter differs where you live.

The students see a map of Greenland. A marker indicates where Ilulissat is located.

In class you can talk about:

• What you see on the map.
• How many people are living in Ilulissat.
• What else you know about Greenland and Ilulissat.
• Do you know the names of other places on the map?

In class you can talk about:

• Where your hometown or settlement is located.
• How many people are living there?
• Do you know the names of other places on the map?

Now it is time for the students to listen to the podcast The Dog Lot. They start the podcast by clicking on the icon in the middle of page 12.

It is recommended that they listen in pairs or small groups.

Let the students spend some minutes talking to the one next to them about what they just heard.

On page 13 the students will make short sound recordings telling about the podcast. The pictures on the page may help them remember what they heard.

Insertion of sound see instruction 1 here

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

Review in class

It is recommended to have a joint discussion in class when working with pages 12-13 is finished. We suggest that you support this with writing and maybe illustrating concepts and keywords on the blackboard.

In class you could talk about:

• What surprised the students when listening to the podcast.
• Concepts and keywords that the students encountered in the podcast.

You may find inspiration for the conversation below.

Concepts and keywords

• Culture
  Culture consists of all the values, habits, traditions, knowledge and attitudes which characterize a society or an individual in their own historical and geographical context.
• Hunting and fishing culture
  Since the first immigrations at Thule about 4-5.000 years ago Greenland has been dependent on nature’s resources in the form of fish, birds and land and marine mammals. Hunting and fishing are still the most important livelihood for Greenlanders and Greenlandic society. These natural conditions have led to the development of a unique culture, built upon proud traditions.

What do you know about the culture of Greenland?

What other cultures do you know?

• Cornerstone – the dogs are a cornerstone of the Greenlandic hunting and fishing culture
  A cornerstone is part of the supporting foundation, an important precondition for or component of something. A house without a foundation tumbles down. Without frost ice becomes water; frost is a precondition for the formation of ice. The dogs transport the catch, fish and people across ice and mountains, where no other means are available. The dogs are the cornerstone of transport.

Why are the dogs a cornerstone in this culture?

Could you be a hunter and fisher without having dogs?

• Lifeblood – in the community/ transportation of catch and humans
  The dogs are the lifeblood of the community where they in generation after generation have hauled the catch home to the settlement and transported people between settlements and continents.
  Lifeblood is an element that is a critical condition for something being able to function. The dogs are a condition for transporting the catch back to the settlements and towns.

What does it mean that something is the lifeblood of a community?

What is the lifeblood of your everyday life?

• Cycle – the cycle of the game animals follows the seasonal cycle of the ice
  A cycle is characterized by something returning more or less regularly, repeating itself.
  A calendar day has a known and fixed course. It is divided into day and night. The seasons come and go in a definite order. The ice has a cycle. The movements of the ice are influenced by cold and heat (the cycle of the seasons), which in turn influence the conditions of life for the game animals.

What are the four seasons called?
What is characteristic of each season?

Do you know the cycle of water?

How does the cycle of the ice affect working with dog sledges?

• Tradition – the sled dogs, hunting and fishing
  The sled dogs are part of special Greenlandic traditions that granddad Niels would like to pass on to his grandchildren.

What is the difference between a working dog and a family dog?

What is a tradition, and what other traditions do you know?

• Missing – Granddad Niels lives in Ilulissat, and his grandchild William lives in Hjørring. Granddad Niels misses his grandchild and the time when they could seek adventure and go hunting together.

William and his granddad talk together on Messenger. Do you know Messenger?

How do you talk with those you miss, or who are far away?

William misses his dogs, granddad Niels misses William. What might the dogs be missing?

Now the students will make their own reference book using words from the blackboard. Text as well as pictures can be inserted.

Insertion of sound, pictures & text see instructions 1,2 & 3 here

The students may also draw their own pictures and place them on a page as described above.

Now the students will watch films about the sled dog in modern Greenland.

The Natural History Museum of Denmark in five videos zooms in on five people who all have the sled dog as part of their existence and everyday life in modern Greenland. The five films can be found on the home page of the museum.

In the book we have chosen three of the five films. The videos are in Greenlandic with English subtitles.

It may be a good idea to watch the videos together in class and pause when needed to talk about them.

With the videos you find a description of them and a question that may help the students to reflect on what they see in the film.

Here you read the book Qimmeq which is about the Greenland sled dog. On the following pages we have selected a small part of this book for our work.

The topics are:

1. The origin of the sled dog, pages 7, 8, 11 and 13
2. The life of a sled dog, page 16
3. The significance of the sled dog, page 23

We recommend that you read the text together with the class.

If you want to, you may choose further topics in the book and learn even more about the Greenland sled dog.

In class you could talk about:

• Why the sled dog has to be so strong and enduring.
• What makes the sled dog capable of coping with very low temperatures.
• Why it is necessary for the dog to be able to handle those low temperatures.
• The size of the sled dog.
• The difference between sled dogs and family dogs.
• The appearance of the sled dogs

Let the students read or listen to the text.

In class you can talk about:

• Why the sea around Disko no longer freezes to ice.
• What the future will be like for Willams’s dogs and the other dogs in the dog lots.

The students could reread or listen to page 16 in the book Qimmeq.

Here the students can move the boxes around to make them match.

Now the students must answer the question: Where do sled dogs come from?

The students could reread or listen to pages 7, 8, 11 and 13 in the book Qimmeq.

Insertion of pictures & text see instructions 2 & 3 here

The students may also draw their own pictures and place them on a page as described above.

Here the students will answer these questions:

• Which role did sled dogs play through history?
• Which role do they play today?

The students could reread or listen to page 23 in the book Qimmeq.

Insertion of sound, pictures & text see instructions 1,2 & 3 here

The students may also draw their own pictures and place them on a page as described above.

The students now must work with their knowledge about the sled dog.

They will make an interview or an audio story describing the significance of sled dogs for the Greenlandic community.

If the students want to make an interview, they can contact the Icefjord Centre here. They can help finding a sledge driver (“musher”) to interview. Or the students can assume the roles of e.g., a sledge driver and his/her talking dog.

Or they can make their own audio story from the perspective of the dog or a human – which could be William. Their product can contain real dog sounds or just sounds of silence.

Several pages have been placed in the Book Creator book. The students can choose one or more of these or make their own.

The students can work with the sound recorder, images, text and video.

Insertion of sound, pictures & text see instructions 1,2 & 3 here

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

As conclusion of the process the students will present their work to the rest of the class. Focus will be on the communicative and presentational abilities.

The podcast The Dog Lot has been created for the Icefjord Centre in Ilulissat by Katrine Nyland.

Graphics were produced by Oncotype.

Teaching material for the podcast has been developed by Lotte Brinkmann from Anholt Læringsværksted with feedback from Leg med It.

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

The teaching material The Dog Log is published under a Creative Commons crediting licens CC:BY.

The Qimmeq project has been developed by Ilisimatusarfik and the University of Copenhagen. The children’s non-fiction book “Qimmeq – kalaallit qimmiat qimuttoq – the Greenland sled dog” was produced by Anne Katrine Gjerløff, Ilisimatusarfik and the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

The texts, assignments and pictures can be shared, reproduced and adapted, with the proviso that “The Dog Lot by the Icefjord Centre Ilulissat” is credited as the source.