Charles Darwin’s work was critical to the development of evolutionary thinking, and his claims about how species change over time were fueled by his experiences as a young man on a research ship called the HMS Beagle. In this activity, you’ll learn how to interpret images and maps in order to extract information about Darwin’s trip to the Galapagos Islands.

Working in pairs or small groups, you’ll look at material in the Voyage of the Beagle Gallery and answer a few questions.

First, examine the images and read the captions of these slides: Route of the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin, Tierra del Fuego, and Galapagos Islands.

• What information do these images provide about the voyage Darwin made and the kinds of ecosystems he explored?

Now, look at the images and read the captions of Ancient Animals of Argentina and the Galapagos Finches, and then answer these questions:

• Why might someone in Darwin’s time be surprised to find fossils of extinct animals?
• How did Darwin explain the fact that there were different types of finches, with different beaks, on each of the islands of the Galapagos?

Since Darwin published his ideas in 1859, the idea of evolution has sparked controversy. As Haught writes, “Nothing in contemporary science has proved more challenging to religious believers than evolutionary biology.” Religion and science take different approaches to claims, evidence, and claims testing.

In this article, you’ll learn about the relationship between faith and science with particular focus on evolution and Darwin’s struggle to publish his work on natural selection.

Skimming for Gist

Once Darwin formulated his ideas, he did not rush to publish them. On the one hand, Darwin, like any good scientist, was always on the lookout for more evidence to support his claims. On the other hand, he knew that his ideas about evolution and natural selection would upset many people who saw his ideas as a challenge to the established order.

Understanding Content

As you read the article more carefully a second time through, think about the following questions:

1. How can Darwin’s theory of natural selection frighten some belief systems while it strengthens faith in others?
2. John Haught suggests that there are three approaches to understanding the relationship between evolution and religion: conflict, contrast, and convergence. How Does Haught describe each of the three approaches?
3. Can you think of other approaches to the relationship between evolution and religion besides the three that Haught identifies?

Thinking Conceptually

Are religion and science, which take different approaches to knowledge, destined to always be in conflict?

Charles Darwin wrote about how species changed by means of natural selection, but he could not understand how traits passed on from one generation to the next in a species. DNA proved to be the key to this part of the process. Since the discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950s, scientists have built upon the work of Watson, Crick, and Franklin, filling in the gaps in the story and adding detail to our understanding.

In order to understand the characteristics of life, you must learn about the importance of DNA. This article explains how scientists built upon collective learning to discover the structure of DNA.

Skimming for Gist

DNA plays a crucial role in each of the four characteristics of life: homeostasis, metabolism, reproduction, and adaptation. Scientists realized the importance of DNA to life long before they understood the nature and structure of DNA. DNA is incredibly small, and scientists who were seeking to understand it in the early 1950s had to overcome a number of challenges to discover its structure.

Understanding Content

As you read the article more carefully a second time through, think about the following questions.

1. What are the components of DNA?
2. Scientists in the 1950s were convinced that DNA held the instructions for creating new organisms but what key piece of evidence was still a mystery?
3. Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, and James Watson are all described as biochemists, but they relied on different methods for determining the structure of DNA. Franklin used x-ray crystallography. What is x-ray crystallography, and what clues did it provide about the structure of DNA?
4. Watson and Crick built models. What were their models like, and what clues did they provide about the structure of DNA?
5. How did the discovery of the structure of DNA provide evidence for Darwin’s theory of natural selection?

Thinking Conceptually

Explain how the discovery of DNA and its structure is an example of collective learning. What advances in the study of DNA have happened since the 1950s?

Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951) was an African American woman who grew up on the same land her ancestors had lived on as enslaved people. When she was diagnosed with cancer, doctors took a sample of the tumor they found without her consent. These cells are the source of HeLa cells, the first immortal human cell line and one that proved immensely important to research and the treatment of disease. Yet, Henrietta and her family were not aware that her cells were being distributed and did not have a voice in the way they were being used until recently.

Nothing lives forever, right? Well, that depends on how you look at life. In Unit 5, we do just that! We look at life on Earth and how life has evolved over time. The biography of Henrietta Lacks showcases the building blocks of life—cells—and shows how one woman’s “immortal” cells revolutionized many areas of science and health care. Henrietta’s story also provides evidence to help you examine ideas like consent, identity, and the rights we have over our own bodies.

Read 1: Observe

As you read this graphic biography for the first time, review the Read 1: Observe section of your Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. Be sure to record one question in the thought bubble on the top-right. You don’t need to write anything else down. However, if you’d like to record your observations, feel free to do so on scrap paper.

Read 2: Understand

On the tool, summarize the main idea of the comic and provide two pieces of evidence that helped you understand the creator’s main idea. You can do this only in writing or you can get creative with some art. Some of the evidence you find may come in the form of text (words). But other evidence will come in the form of art (images). You should read the text looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the main idea, and key supporting details. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. How did doctors at Johns Hopkins originally obtain a sample of Henrietta Lacks’ cells?
2. Why are HeLa cells considered “immortal”?
3. What breakthroughs in research and health care have HeLa cells led to?
4. Why is it significant that HeLa cells were publicly identified as belonging to Henrietta Lacks?
5. Why do you think the artist chose to include both an image of Henrietta’s son, Lawrence, and a DNA strand in the last frame of the biography?

Read 3: Connect

In this read, you should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in this unit of the course. On the bottom of the tool, record what you learned about this person’s life and how it relates to what you’re learning.

1. Henrietta Lacks died in 1951, yet her HeLa cells continue to grow today. How does this biography of Henrietta Lacks support, extend, or challenge what you thought about what makes you “you”?

To Be Continued…

On the second page of the tool, your teacher might ask you to extend the graphic biography to a second page. This is where you can draw and write what you think might come next. Here, you can become a co-creator of this graphic biography!

Codes provide the instructions for life, chemistry, and technology thus connecting the Big History thresholds of new chemical elements, life, and the Modern Revolution.

This video will help you understand the connection between binary code and DNA.

Preview

Everything around us is equipped with a code whether it’s used to program a computer, create a chemical formula, or provide instructions for the replication of cells in a living organism. Codes are as important to biology as they are to technology.

Key Ideas – Factual

Think about the following questions as you watch the video:

1. What do computer viruses and biological viruses have in common?
2. How have codes changed warfare?
3. How are computer codes similar to living organisms?

Thinking Conceptually

How is DNA both incredibly simple and complex at the same time?

Understanding claim testers is just the beginning! It is now time for you to support, evaluate, and refute claims. You will apply what you know about authority, logic, intuition, and evidence to write supporting statements for claims and analyze the quality of the statements put forth by your peers. In doing so, you will be gaining experience in supporting your own claims with evidence—which will promote your development as a reader, writer, and critical thinker.

Reading, writing
As readers, we need to be equipped with the tools required to be critical of the stories we hear and the narratives we accept and promote. You will practice reading for meaning while exploring the various claims—and you will engage with the claims by creating supporting statements. Next, you will analyze the supporting statements and determine the quality of such statements in collaborative conversation in small groups. You will practice writing in multiple parts of this activity, as you will write supporting and refuting statements in relation to the claims you’re given.

In this claim-testing activity, you are given four claims about life on Earth. You are asked to work with these claims in three different ways:

1. Find supporting statements for those claims.
2. Evaluate the strength of the supporting statements provided for those claims.
3. Provide statements that refute (argue against) the claims.

Get into small table groups. Each group should have a complete set of Claim Cards in the middle of their table. Listen for your teacher’s directions for when to start.

Round 1

1. Grab one Claim Card from the center of the table.
2. On the card, write down a statement that supports the claim. You can use prior knowledge or course materials for this.
3. Pass your Claim Card to the person to your right.
4. Write down a statement that supports the claim on the card that you now have. It can’t be the same as any of the supports already written on the card.
5. Repeat the process until each group member has written a supporting statement on each card.
6. Put the Claim Cards back in the center of the table.

Round 2

1. Grab one Claim Card from the pile and stand up.
2. Find at least three other students who have the same claim as you and get into a group with them (if there are more than six people in your group, let your teacher know).
3. Look at all the supporting statements that were written for your claim. Decide which supporting statements are strongest (that is, they best support the claim).
4. Write the strongest supporting statements on the whiteboard so everyone can see them.

Round 3

1. With the same group you were in for Round 2, consider any historical exceptions to your claim. What can you offer to refute the claim?
2. Add at least one refuting statement, what we often refer to as a counterclaim, on the board so everyone can see it.
3. Present both your strongest supporting statements and the exception to the claim to the class—be sure to explain your reasoning for choosing your supporting statements and refutations.

This activity will help you learn the best way to use supporting statements as evidence for a thesis statement, and how to acknowledge counterclaims in essay writing.

You’ve been creating timelines regularly by this point in the course, and you should be getting the hang of them and the ways in which they can be useful. Creating timelines adds another dimension to your understanding by providing yet another way to contextualize and understand historical content. This type of analysis is different from those used when reading, watching videos, or having class discussions.

You’re going to add Darwin, Crick, Watson, and Franklin to the class timeline that represents how these scientists understood biology and evolution. You’ll use the same method you used in earlier lessons when looking at our understanding of the Universe, chemistry, and periodization.

Revisit the following, on your own:

• Voyage of the Beagle: Reading and Gallery
• “Crick, Watson, and Franklin”

Next, do the following:

1. Read the articles.
2. Add the following information about each of the scientists (Darwin, Crick, Watson, and Franklin) to the class timeline:
   • Birth and death dates of the scientists
   • The major discoveries they made
   • Who and what influenced their thinking?
3. Compare these scientists to those that were covered in the two earlier versions of the timeline. Your teacher may also ask you to add the scientists from these articles to the class timeline: “The Maragha School”, “Pure Metal: Jābir ibn Hayyān”, and “The Universe Through a Pinhole; Ibn al-Haytham.”

Once you’ve finished adding to or redrawing your timeline, get into small groups to answer the following questions:

• What did the scientists that came after Darwin add to our understanding of life?
• Does it seem like our acceptance of scientific concepts related to life and evolution has changed over time?
• How does adding these people (and others) to the timeline help us understand changes in scientific thinking?

Respond to these questions in writing and submit them to your teacher.

Much like you did in the last Investigation writing activity, in this activity you’ll review a student writing sample and first analyze and then improve that sample. In this particular activity, you’ll be focusing on the second row of the BHP Writing Rubric, Analysis and Evidence. This next step, in which you’ll come to understand this vital ingredient of good historical writing, has you move beyond simply identifying the where evidence is used in an essay, to actually revising the text to improve the use of that evidence.

Reading, claim testing
As with all the activities you encounter in this series on revising historical writing, you have to engage in close reading, which is tied to the writing you are asked to do. This activity is also a good one for thinking about how authors might use claim testing before using specific evidence. This is helpful for ensuring their evidence is high quality and can assist them in anticipating counterclaims or counterarguments that may arise in response to their work.

This activity is going to be a lot like one you did in the last unit—you’re going to read a piece of writing and analyze it using a section of the BHP Writing Rubric. Then, you’ll use that analysis to revise and improve upon what you read.

The essay you’re about to read is a response to the Unit 4 Investigation. The Investigation question for Unit 4 is, “How and why do theories become generally accepted?” There were seven documents in the Investigation Library that was provided to the essay’s author.

Do you remember the three main things that should happen in your writing when using text as evidence? Discuss this with your class. Now, look at the Revising Investigation Writing – Use of Evidence Worksheet. First, read the essay, keeping in mind how the writer used and analyzed texts as evidence in their writing. Then, follow the directions on the worksheet: Highlight the thesis/major claim in the article. Then, underline any area where texts are used as evidence. From there, pick two sentences/areas where you believe the writing could be improved in relation to analysis and evidence. Now, revise that writing. Finally, provide the writer with two general comments about the use of evidence in the essay. Then, discuss your answers with your class.

Investigation 5 is up next! Make sure to show off your newfound mastery of analysis and evidence in your writing.

Investigation 5 Prompt: How and why do theories evolve?

This Investigation encourages you to think about why theories change over time and consider how others have supported, extended, or challenged an original idea. Considering ways that new evidence and ideas have strengthened, altered, or challenged a view is an essential feature of collective learning. Additionally, this assessment helps you continue to develop your ability to make evidence-based claims to support an argument for document-based questions you will encounter on standardized exams.

Day 1
It’s time for another Investigation. This time, you’ll use Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection to think about how ideas change over time. This Investigation asks you to respond to the question, How and why do theories evolve?

First, your teacher will ask you to write down your conjectures—best guesses—about when and how theories become accepted. Keep in mind that you will use the theory of evolution as a case study to explore how an idea evolves based on new ideas, information, and technology.

You’ll have about 5 to 10 minutes to make notes and think about how and why theories change.

With your class or in small groups, share your list of ideas. Next, your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Investigation 5 Document Library. As you review each document, you’ll use the graphic organizer to record the major claims from each source and to document the evidence that supports those claims.

Day 2
Now it’s time to write! You’ll develop a five- to six-paragraph essay arguing how and why a theory evolves, using evidence from the case study of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Remember to use information from the Investigation 5 Document Library along with BHP concepts and other information you’ve learned in this unit as evidence to support your argument or opposing point of view. It is also important that you cite the sources you use as evidence in your essay.

In order to improve your writing skills, it is important to read examples—both good and bad—written by other people. Reviewing writing samples will help you develop and practice your own skills in order to better understand what makes for a strong essay.

Your teacher will provide sample essays for this unit’s Investigation prompt and provide instructions for how you will use them to refine your writing skills. Whether you’re working with a high-level example or improving on a not-so-great essay, we recommend having the BHP Writing Rubric on hand to help better understand how you can improve your own writing. As you work to identify and improve upon aspects of a sample essay, you’ll also be developing your own historical writing skills!