When Elsa the reindeer first stepped into the classroom, handler Greg Finstad had no idea where that first educational excursion would lead.  Now, five years later, the Reindeer Research Program (RRP) has published Reindeer Roundup! A K-12 Educator's Guide to Reindeer in Alaska.  Development of the curriculum, complete with book, CD-ROM, and instructional kit, was supported by the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, and the UAF College of Rural Alaska, with considerable support also coming from the SNRAS Reindeer Research Program

Fitzgerald, Doreen

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Reindeer Inspire New Teaching Guideby Doreen FitzgeraldWhen Elsa the reindeer ﬁ rst stepped into the classroom, handler Greg Finstad had no idea where that ﬁ rst educational excursion would lead. Now, ﬁ ve years later, the Reindeer Research Program (RRP) has published Reindeer Roundup! A K-12 Educator’s Guide to Reindeer in Alaska. Development of the curricu-lum, complete with book, CD-ROM, and instructional kit, was supported by the Na-tional Science Foundation, the US Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Re-search, Education, and Extension Service, and the UAF College of Rural Alaska, with considerable support also coming from the SNRAS Reindeer Research Program.“Reindeer Roundup! is our response to the countless requests we’ve had to take Elsa to classrooms and give presentations on reindeer,” said Finstad, project manager for the research program. Finstad took Elsa to that ﬁ rst classroom visit at the request of his wife, Bev Finstad, a kindergarten teacher in Fairbanks.Agricultural & Forestry Experiment Station • University of Alaska Fairbanks • Miscellaneous Publication 2004-08AFES publications are on the web at:www.uaf.edu/snras/afes/pubs/Reindeer bulls on the Seward Peninsula in June. Note their large velvet antlers and dark brown summer coats.—PHOTO COURTESY REINDEER RESEARCH PROGRAM2Smith, and Suzanne Worker. Tammy A. Smith, a teacher of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District in Fair-banks, served as educational consultant to the project.“The educators who participated in UAF Reindeer Cur-riculum Development workshops in Fairbanks and Nome de-veloped many of the ideas and some of the individual lesson plans in the book. Their enthusiasm motivated us to incorpo-rate many of their ideas,” said Carrie Bucki, former education-al outreach coordinator for the RRP and Reindeer Roundup! author.“Although many excellent educational materials are available on caribou, Reindeer Roundup! is unique to the culture and history of Alaska,” Bucki said. “We hope these materials will enable teachers to incorporate this regional knowl-edge into the Alaska curriculum.”Bucki said development of the curriculum materials beneﬁ ted from university researchers and sci-entists working with local educators and from the help of community members who want to teach future generations about this rural Alaska tradition. She also credited the RRP staff for their support and especially their assistance with materials col-lection for the educational support “Kids need real life experiences to link to the information they are being presented in the classroom,” she said. “What could be more real than a reindeer they can touch and observe up close? That experience makes the adaptations of arctic ani-mals much more meaningful to the students. Of course,” she added, “Greg had to think fast on his feet when the kindergar-deners asked if Elsa could ﬂ y, and then he had to be very en-tertaining to get them over their disappointment when he told them only Santa’s reindeer could do that.” She also noted that because the reindeer industry in Alaska is rich in history, sci-ence, and culture, it offers a local vehicle for teaching many of the Alaska state standards in science, math, and social studies.Interest by other teachers led to many such visits by Elsa to Fairbanks area schools, and the new curriculum will expand this outreach to Bering Straits, Fairbanks North Star Borough, and various Lower 48 school districts that will receive the book, CD-ROM, and a kit of support material related to rein-deer anatomy and physiology. All but the support kit will be available on line for teachers everywhere to download.“The curriculum was developed in part using lesson plans written by Nome and Fairbanks teachers who attended our reindeer education workshops,” Finstad said. “We wanted to produce a unit that uses Alaska’s reindeer industry as a working model for the management of a sustainable natural resource in a northern ecosystem, one that would broaden the curriculum and expose students to applied science. Reindeer are an excel-lent medium to study the characteristics of tundra ecosystems and adaptations of animals living in the Arctic.”Teachers were exposed to reindeer production and re-search through workshop presentations made by Larry Davis, Carl Emmons, Rose Fosdick, Dan Karmun, Knut Kielland, Heather Oleson, Kumi Rattenbury, William Schneider, Tim Greg Finstad, Reindeer Research Program manager, with Elsa visiting schoolchildren in class. —PHOTO COURTESY REINDEER RESEARCH PROGRAMA three-week-old reindeer calf. —PHOTO COURTESY REINDEER RESEARCH PROGRAM3kits: Rob Aikman, Darrell Blodgett, Robert van Buren, Ran-dy Fulweber, Rhonda Wadeson, and Suzanne Worker. The “Reindeer, People, and Land” section of the curricu-lum guide contains factual, background information about reindeer and how they interact with their Alaska environment. It is an overview that can be used for some basic research. Topics include arctic ecology, reindeer history, biological adaptations, behavior, disease, current research, and applied programs.The “Lesson Plans” and “Extensions” sections contain twenty-two activities covering a wide range of subjects and grade levels. While most lessons were written for elementary and middle school students, many can be used as introductory material with older students, or be enhanced and developed for more rigorous study. Each lesson contains information on grade level, subject, duration, and performance objectives. A cross-referencing index provides access to the desired grade level, subject, or topic. Each lesson correlates to Alaska state standards and Alaska cultural standards for students and edu-cators. The lesson plan example on page 6 shows how the plans are organized. Along with the lessons, extension activities, such as rangi-fer tag, thermal regulation and insulation, reindeer diorama, and recording herding culture are suggested. A glossary is in-cluded and the “For Further Study” section contains a list of adult reference books, children’s books, videos, and other resources. To augment lessons, or support teachers who want to create their own lessons, an array of other materials and props are provided on a CD-ROM and in the kit of reindeer-related physical materials. (See page 5 for a description of the props). The CD-ROM includes photos and slide shows which teach-ers can use as-is or integrate into related lesson plans. The RRP staff also will be available to assist teachers with pre-senting lecture material, developing advanced lesson ideas, coordinating live reindeer classroom visits, or planning a ﬁ eld trip to the Reindeer Research Pro-gram’s facility at the Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station’s Fairbanks farm.The curriculum’s audiovisual material (ﬁ lms and videos) include two ﬁ lms: The Reindeer Queen and High Tech on the Tundra. Three PowerPoint slide shows are provid-ed. Fifty slides illustrate how rein-deer are adapted to life in the Arc-tic. They show such characteristics as summer and winter foraging, ﬂ o-tation and gait, and travel through snow, and how hair coat, nose, metabolism, and other features are Lesson PlansReindeer Herding in AlaskaWebsite Scavenger HuntReindeer vs. CaribouHistory of Reindeer in AlaskaReindeer NumbersTraditional Uses of ReindeerEskimo Ice CreamVelvet AntlersWhat Do Farmed Reindeer Eat?How Much Do Reindeer Eat?Hair Identiﬁ cationReindeer RumenBuilding a Radio and TransmitterCreating a Reindeer BrochureReindeer Alphabet BookReindeer BingoCreating an Arctic Food WebExtensionsRangifer TagThermal Regulation and InsulationReindeer: Cattle of the Arctic?Reindeer DioramaRecording Herding CultureReindeer are gentle and easily herded. —PHOTO COURTESY REINDEER RESEARCH PROGRAM4adaptations to the cold. The role of lichen in diet, functions of antlers, defense, reproduction and herding are also covered. The “History of Rein-deer in Alaska” slides cover ﬁ ve distinct periods, beginning with conditions before reindeer were introduced. The story continues through the in-troduction of reindeer in 1892, training of Alaska Native herders, mission reindeer, the ﬁ rst Native herd owners, use of reindeer by miners, reindeer stations in northwestern Alaska through 1977, and the story of people who were involved in the introduction and development of the industry. It also covers the Reindeer Act of 1937, range man-agement, and permits. “Radio and Satellite Te-lemetry” by Suzanne Worker covers the basics of wildlife telemetry. It begins with VHF telemetry and how it works, then addresses satellite telem-etry and how it differs from VHF telemetry. It is written in general terms but addresses reindeer-speciﬁ c uses.The guide includes other reindeer and edu-cation related resources (seven website links); the cross-reference section, with indexes to grade lev-els, teaching subjects, and topics; and the slide indexes, with descriptions and titles for each slide in the PowerPoint shows. The entire pack-age includes the guide, educational kit materials, and CD-ROMs Reindeer Herding in Alaska (UAF Jukebox series interactive oral history of reindeer herding in Alaska) and Reindeer Visual Aids (slide shows and images). Unless noted, all photos and graphics in the guide were taken or created by the UAF Reindeer Research Program. The historical photos are from the following publications: Arctic Exodus: The Last Great Trail Drive by Dick North; Where Did the Reindeer Come From? Alaska Experience, the First Fifty Years by Alice Postell; The Yukon Relief Ex-pedition and the Journal of Carl Johan Sakariassenedited by V.R. Rausch and D.L. Baldwin; Longest Reindeer Herder by Chester Seveck; and Reading, Religion, and Rein-deer: Sheldon Jackson’s Legacy to Alaska by Elizabeth Tower. The Reindeer Roundup! materials are based on work sup-ported by the National Science Foundation (project number OPP-9979473), the USDA Cooperative State Research, Ed-ucation, and Extension Service (special project number 2001-38426-11488), and supported by the UAF College of Rural Alaska. Reindeer Roundup! will be available from the Reindeer Research Program in August 2004. For more information contact Rhonda Wadeson, Reindeer Research Program, P.O. Box 757200, University of Alaska Fairbanks; (e-mail) fyrrp@uaf.edu; (phone) 907-474-5449; (fax) 907-474-7175. The printed guide will be available on line at http://www.uaf.edu/snras/afes/pubs/index.html. The publication was edited by Deirdre Helfferich and Doreen Fitzgerald, AFES Publica-tions Ofﬁ ce, School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks.you can visit the Reindeer Research Program at http://reindeer.salrm.uaf.edu/The Davis family reindeer corral near Nome. —PHOTO COURTESY REINDEER RESEARCH PROGRAM5Where do Reindeer Come From?Reindeer and caribou share the same genus and species name, Rangifer tarandus. Reindeer are a semidomesticat-ed subspecies of Rangifer. They were probably domesti-cated along the Russian-Mongolia border ﬁ ve to seven thousand years ago, and might have been ﬁ rst used as decoys to help hunters catch wild game. Once domes-ticated by the nomadic tribes of this region, they pulled sleds and supplied meat, clothing, and milk. Their do-mestication spread throughout Russia and Scandinavia, where raising and herding reindeer is still a way of life today. Reindeer did not arrive in North America until the 1890s. Reindeer and caribou taxonomic chart:Kingdom: AnimaliaPhylum: Chordata (backbone with     spinal  cord)Class:  Mammalia (milk producing)Subclass:  Ungulata (hooved)Order:  Artiodactyla (even-toed)Suborder:  Ruminantia (true ruminant)Family: CervidaeGenus: RangiferSpecies: tarandusDiﬀ erent subspecies of reindeer and caribou exist throughout the Circumpolar North. The subspecies name is an additional name added to the genus and spe-cies name to further classify the animal. In Eurasia, rein-deer are classiﬁ ed as either domesticated or wild. Only in North America are indigenous (wild) Rangifer referred to as caribou. There are seven subspecies of Rangifer:Rangifer tarandus tarandus: Eurasian tundra reindeer found in Alaska and in parts of EurasiaRangifer tarandus fennicus: Eurasian forest reindeer found in the forested areas of RussiaRangifer tarandus platyrhyncus: Svalbard reindeer found on Svalbard IslandRangifer tarandus granti: the caribou subspecies found in Alaska and the YukonRangifer tarandus groenlandicus: Barren ground cari-bou found in Greenland and Northern CanadaRangifer tarandus caribou: Woodland caribou found in Central and Southern CanadaRangifer tarandus pearyi: Peary caribou found in the far Northern Arctic Islands of CanadaReindeer Roundup! Educational Kit MaterialsEach kit includes the book, Reindeer Roundup! and the following items:Animal specimensReindeer peltReindeer skullVelvet antler Bone antler2 reindeer hooves (1 shovel shaped, 1 snowshoe shaped)2 caribou hooves (1 shovel shaped, 1 snowshoe shaped)VideosHigh Tech on the Tundra, 20 minutesReindeer Queen, 28 minutesCD-ROMsReindeer Herding in AlaskaUAF Jukebox series, an interactive oral history programReindeer Visual Aids1. PowerPoint slide shows:Adaptations of Reindeer to Life in the ArcticHistory of Reindeer in AlaskaRadio and Satellite TelemetryEskimo Ice Cream2. Images (see samples on the following page):Cartoon drawings of reindeer biology and behaviorGraphs and mapsHistory photosReindeer photosFairbanks farm reindeer Seward Peninsula reindeer and activities Cow and newborn calf at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm.—PHOTO COURTESY REINDEER RESEARCH PROGRAM64. History of Reindeer in Alaska(sample lesson plan from Reindeer Roundup!)Grade 5 - 9Subject HistoryDuration 2 hoursAlaska Content Standards H.B.3, H.C.3Cultural Standards for Students A.3, E.5Cultural Standards for Educators B.3, B.4, E.5Instructional GoalStudents will gain a historical understanding of the history of the reindeer in Alaska, explore various cultural lifestyles, and synthesize historical information in chronological order.Performance ObjectiveStudents will listen to or view an account of the history of reindeer in Alaska. Students will identify important events and complete a timeline. MaterialsPowerPoint slide show entitled History of Reindeer in Alaska (on the Reindeer Visual Aids CD-ROM)Reindeer History Timeline worksheet for each student (photocopy master on page 60)Video, The Reindeer Queen (included in this kit) BackgroundBy the late 1880s, there were reports of starving Alaska Native popu-lations in western Alaska due to the decimation of marine mammals from the whaling industry and scarce numbers of caribou. Dr. Sheldon Jackson, a U.S. general agent for education and a Presbyterian missio-nary, lobbied for federal monies to assist Alaska Natives. He built missi-on schools and in the late 1800s introduced reindeer into Alaska from Russia as a source of protein and revenue. Reindeer were brought to Alaska on Captain Healy’s U.S. Revenue Cutter, the Bear. Siberian her-ders and then Saami herders were brought to western Alaska to teach Native Alaskans how to herd reindeer. The reindeer industry grew until there were over 600,000 animals present in the 1930s. Mismanage-ment and losses to wolves and caribou sparked a dramatic decline to only 50,000 reindeer by the 1950s. The Reindeer Act of 1937 allows only Alaska Natives to own reindeer. Today there are approximately 30,000 throughout the state and 20,000 in western Alaska, with most living on the Seward Peninsula and in island herds. Mary Antisarlook, or “The Reindeer Queen,” was the ﬁrst Native Alaskan woman to own reindeer.—PHOTO FROM WHERE DID REINDEER COME FROM?, BY ALICE POSTELL, 1990, P. 337Procedure1. Show your class the History of Reindeer in Alaska slide show using the accompanying slide index in Appendix B on page 170 for assistance, or create your own slide show using the same pictures found on the Reindeer Visual Aids CD-ROM. 2. Pass out the Reindeer History Timeline worksheet and have the students complete it during the slide show presentation or afterward. 3. Discuss the historical signiﬁcance of the events on the timeline worksheet.4. Show the video, The Reindeer Queen. Extensions1. View the oral history Jukebox CD-ROM, Reindeer Herding in Alaska, included in this kit. Assign groups of students diﬀerent reindeer herders listed on the CD. Have each group summarize the herders’ history and involvement in the reindeer industry in a short report.2. Use the oral history Jukebox CD-ROM, Reindeer Herding in Alaska, in other ways for further study and research. 3. Have a reindeer herder or Native elder visit your classroom and discuss their experiences with reindeer and reindeer herding. AssessmentAccurate completion of worksheet—see answers below. Quiz—from the events on the timeline, choose ﬁve and record them out of order on a paper or the board for the students. The students must number them in chronological order. Answers to the history timeline worksheet: 1892 – K1894 – E1900 – D1901 – H1908-1914 – F1914-1929 – B1930 – C1937 – I1950 – G1968 – A1981 – J TIMELINE SHOWN AT APPROXIMATELY 45 PERCENT ACTUAL SIZE IN CURRICULUM.8School of Natural Resources & Agricultural SciencesAgricultural & Forestry Experiment StationP.O. Box 757140University of Alaska FairbanksFairbanks, Alaska 99775-7140The UAF School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences prepares undergraduate and graduate students for careers in natural resource management, forest sciences, and plant animal, and soil sciences. Visit us on the web at www.uaf.edu/snras. For electronic (digital) copies of our publications, please go to www.uaf.edu/snras/afes/pubs/For hard copies, please contact us at:AFES Publications Oﬃ  ce305 O’Neill Building, Fairbanks CampusP.O. Box 757200, Fairbanks AK 99775-7200e-mail: fynrpub@uaf.eduphones: 907.474.5042 or 474.6923   fax: 907.474.6184The University of Alaska Fairbanks is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges. UAF is an AA/EO employer and educational institution.Cow and calf at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm.—PHOTO COURTESY REINDEER RESEARCH PROGRAM

Miscellaneous Publication 2004-08

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Miscellaneous Publication 2004-08

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