THE ICEFJORD CENTRE

PAGE BY PAGE GUIDE – THE BOOK CREATOR STUDENT’S BOOK “FREEDOM AND DANGERS”

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.

The students see a map of Greenland. There is a marker that shows where Ilulissat is situated.

In class you can discuss:

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

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:

• Where is your town or settlement situated?
• How many people live in the town or settlement where you live.
• Do you know the name of other places on the map?

Now it is time for the students to listen to the podcast Freedom and Dangers.

They start the podcast by clicking on the icon in the middle of page 12.

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

Before listening to the podcast, you could give a short introduction to the contents of the podcast.

1. Ane Sofie tells about
   1. the special feeling of freedom by driving a dog sledge in the middle of nature.
   2. that the season for dog sledding becomes shorter and shorter.
2. Flemming tells about
   1. the perils that exist on the ice and how important it is to listen to your dogs.
   2. that the normal route out to the hunting cabin and the fishing grounds are 10-15 km.

1. that unpredictable ice now makes you drive a new 40 km route over the mountains.

3. Klaus tells about
   1. an episode where his dog team is so eager to get out on the ice that they run before he gets them fastened to the sledge. He tells how he is picked up by Villy Siegstad and about how another dog handler gets hold of the dogs.
   2. that it is the former Greenlandic champion in dog sledding that picks him up.
   3. that the dogs are full of pranks and mischief on short trips, but that they on the long trips, e.g. 1400-1500 km over the ice sheet, find a rhythm as if they are dependent on each other.
   4. about how the dogs, after a long trip over the ice sheet (1½ months), “had other plans” and right away sought towards the dog lot at the Icefjord Centre.

Let the students spend a few minutes discussing what they have heard in the podcast with the student sitting next to them.

On page 13 the students are to make small sound recordings where they tell about the podcast. The pictures on the page will help them remember what they have heard.

Insertion of sound 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

As a joint review you have a discussion in class. Let the students inspire each other and focus on the words and sentences they make use of.

We recommend that you support the discussion by writing and maybe illustrating concepts and keywords on the board.

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.

Below you can find inspiration for the class discussion.

In the Book Creator book there are some pages with tasks connected to some of the concepts.

You can add more pages yourself for other topics, concepts and keywords you discuss.

Concepts and keywords

• Freedom – Ane Sofie is in the middle of the nature she loves.

For Ane Sofie freedom means that she can be herself and proud of her working dogs. The nature Ane Sofie is in, is the landscape around the Icefjord.

When do you feel free?

When do you become proud?

What does the nature surrounding you look like?

• Dangers – the ice is an unpredictable partner.

The ice and nature offer freedom, but they can also mean dangers. Since the ice melts faster than it used to, it becomes more unpredictable. This means that you have to be very aware of where you ride the dog sledge.

How do the dogs help discover dangers on the ice?

Do you meet dangers in your everyday life?

How do you realise that something is dangerous?

• The dog handler – the driver of the dog sledge.

Ane Sofie and Flemming are dog handlers and sledge drivers.

Can you be a driver with something else than sled dogs?

What do you think is important when you are a dog handler?

• Dog teams and traces – the sled dogs are joined in a team. They are fastened to the sled by harnesses and traces.

When you put together a dog team, you have to think about the relationship the dogs have to each other. There have to be both strong dogs and good lead dogs.

When you have found the dogs that you want in your dog team, the dogs have to be fastened to the dog sledge. This you do with harnesses and traces. The harness is on the sled dog, the traces connect the harnesses to the dog sledge. The traces are often arranged in the form of a fan.

Why is it important to assemble all the sled dogs in a dog team?

Why is it important to be aware of the relationship between the dogs when you assemble a dog team?

• Hunting cabin – a cabin used by hunters and fishermen.

Close to Ilulissat there are two hunting cabins. Both of them are municipal. The cabins are placed where there are good hunting grounds. These are situated at some distance from the town, so the hunters spend the night in the cabins. And the route out to the hunting grounds has become quite a bit longer, now that the ice has receded. The cabins are very primitive. You sleep on a big shelf (sometimes many at the same time), so if it gets too warm, you lie down on the floor.

What kind of fish are caught in the Icefjord?

Now the students are to try and make their own dog team. They can imagine that they are about to drive the trip from Ilulissat to the hunting cabin at Aattartoq, which is about 40 km away.

They need to put a dog team together, that can bring them there and back again safe and sound.

On pages 14-15 there is a picture of a dog team with red traces. Talk about the picture in class. The students can use the picture as inspiration for their work on the following pages.

On pages 16-17 the students are to make their own dog team.

They can search for dog “shapes” in Book Creator. They can choose dogs of different breeds. The students give their dogs names.

On the page there is a dog and a line inserted. The line is the first trace of the dog sled. The students are to make more lines so that their dogs can be fastened to the sled while they construct their own dog team.

They should consider the following:

• How many dogs should their dog team consist of?
• Which qualities should their dogs have? E.g. lead dog, strong dog, team dog etc.
• Should some of the dogs have a shorter or longer trace than the other dogs, so they can run in the front or in the back?

Insertion of shapes see instruction 7 here

The students are to make their own model of a dog sledge; they can use the dog team that they made on pages 16-17, or make a new dog team.

You can find a template here

When the dog sledge is finished, the students take a picture of it and insert the photo in the book on pages 18-19.

Have a look at the model for inspiration.

Model made by students from the settlement school in Qassiarsuk, using the template in Papirklip / Kalaallit Numaat, Qiortakkat by Søren Thaae

Insertion of pictures see instruction 2 here

Here are the rest of the concepts and keywords:

• Rescue operation – rescuers go out to help people in distress, either by helicopter, ambulance or boat.

When the ice becomes insecure, fishermen and dogs sometimes need to be rescued out on the ice.

Who can help you when you get hurt?

Have you been in an ambulance or do you know someone who has experienced it? 

• Global – the global climate is becoming warmer and warmer.

The word “global” comprises the whole planet Earth. This means that it is getting warmer and warmer everywhere on Earth.

What is the difference between “global” and “local”?

• Climate changes – the weather becomes warmer and the ice melts.

When we talk about climate changes, we often also mention global warming and the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect arises when we emit greenhouse gases that make the Earth become warmer and warmer – like in a greenhouse. One example of a greenhouse gas is CO₂. In Greenland, the consequences of the climate changes are that the ice melts faster and earlier than it used to.

How does it influence Ane Sofie and Flemming that the ice melts faster and earlier?

In which connection have you heard about climate changes?

• Season – the season for dog sledding is becoming shorter and shorter.

The snow melts quicker, with the result that the season for dog sledding is changing. Formerly you could drive from the middle of October till May/June. Now you can drive from November/December till the end of April. Because there is not that much ice on the water, it is difficult and dangerous to get out on the Icefjord with a dog sledge.

In what way do you meet the “season” in your everyday life?

Why has the season for dog sledding become shorter? 

• The inland ice – an ice sheet that covers an area with ice.

The ice sheet in Greenland is the next largest in the world, the ice sheet on Antarctica is the largest.

What would the rest of the Earth look like if all of the inland ice melted?

Are there some countries that would be flooded if all of the inland ice melted?

On pages 20-21 there is a map over the area around Ilulissat, where the two hunting cabins that Ane Sofies husband, Flemming, mentions in the podcast, are marked. Flemming tells us that they have been forced to change their route to get out to the ice and fish. Formerly the shortest route out to the ice was to drive the dog sledge out to a hunting cabin placed at Aallaaniarfik. That route was about 10-15 km.

But now there is not much ice on that route any longer, therefore it is not passable. Now they have to drive over the high mountains to a hunting cabin near Aattartoq and that route is about 40 km long.

Apart from the map with the two hunting cabins on it, there is another map that shows how the line of the ice has changed from 1880 to 2018.

The students can use pages 20-21 to talk about the altered route that Flemming and his sled dogs are forced to use and how the climate changes have affected this. They must record their discussion and insert it as a sound file.

Insertion of sound see instruction 1 here

On pages 22 and 23 the students can write sentences or small stories using the keywords that you have talked about. 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.

Insertion of sound and pictures see instructions 1 & 2 here

Use the three pictures on page 24 for a joint discussion about climate changes. Let the students read the text and talk about the pictures with the student sitting next to them before you have the joint discussion with the whole class.

Here are some ideas for the discussion:

• What are climate changes?
• Who do the climate changes affect?
• What is a greenhouse gas?
• What does it mean that it becomes like a greenhouse on Earth?
• Is it only the ice that melts as a result of the climate changes?

You can acquire more knowledge about climate changes here.

Now the students have worked with the Freedom and Dangers podcast, a dog team and a dog sledge, a hunting cabin and climate changes. To conclude this work they now make a drawing. They must insert audial files that tell what they have been drawing

The drawing should refer to the podcast and to what they have worked with in Book Creator.

Focus for the drawing is:

• Climate changes that result in the ice becoming thinner and thinner.
• The dogs sensing that the ice becomes insecure and warning the sledge driver.
• Sled dogs that have to run very far to get to the hunting grounds.

When the students have finished their product, they are to present it – to the rest of the class and perhaps to other students in school, parents etc.

Insertion of sound and pictures see instructions 1 & 2 here

The students present their drawings 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 visual stories, 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 that 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 to change things in their product.

The podcast Freedom and Dangers has been created by the Icefjord Centre in Ilulissat.

The teaching material for the podcast Freedom and Dangers 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 Maria Manuel, Leg med IT.

The teaching material Freedom and Dangers 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 “Freedom and Dangers by The Icefjord Centre Ilulissat” is credited as the source.