Evolution+primary+sec+resources

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 * return to main Evolution page (Charles & Emma) **

__Primary sources to supplement Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith __
**History**: **van Wyhe, John. 2002. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online**. Retrieved December 3, 2013.

The primary source that I found was a site that showed the viewer Charles Darwin’s journal entries. I thought that these were extremely interesting because they not only give a typed version of what he wrote in his journals, there are also pictures of each page of the journal in Darwin’s handwriting. The fact that it is his actual journal is why it is such an interesting primary source. As a historian it is often time extremely difficult to find primary sources because it is not uncommon for them to be destroyed over time or simply unavailable.

This journal is a good primary source for a history classroom because it takes the children back in time, not only with the facts that were written down by Darwin but also by the method of writing (inkwell and paper). By reading these journals the students also get to see what happened to Darwin, step by step from the time he was a boy to the time he started his scientific discoveries on his journeys. This would be useful in history classrooms because with it, the students can pick a certain time frame out of Charles Darwin’s life and do a project on it, whether that is about his journeys and the methods of transportation and routes which he took or if it is on his life London during the Industrial Revolution and how it affected him. There are so many possibilities with this text that different students could work on different aspects of history and compose completely different projects for that era.

**van Wyhe, John. 2002. [|The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online]**. RetrievedNovember 20, 2013.
 * Geology: **

Darwin Online is an outstanding cache of Charles Darwin’s scientific notebooks and manuscripts. This website contains over 100,000 pages of searchable text and 214,000 electronic images of Darwin’s actual notebooks. The majority of these have been edited and annotated for easier use by the searcher. This website also provides the largest collection of Darwin's private papers and manuscripts ever published and it provides links to his personal letters to a wide variety of correspondents, including his wife, Emma.

The section of this website that I am using for my primary source is from Darwin’s Geological Diary. It shows an image of the actual notebook, as well as a typed and annotated text. This source shows the reader exactly what Darwin wrote for all of the different geological features that he saw on his voyage on the HMS Beagle. For an Earth Science classroom this source is great because he goes into detailed descriptions of the different types of rocks that he sees, as well as the rock formations that he observes.

This text could be used to both enhance a teacher’s knowledge about Darwin’s involvement with geology, as well as provide information to students in an unusual way. Usually in science classrooms, students learn about theories through a textbook. By using this source, we show students that things like evolution and continental drift weren’t always common knowledge. Someone had to actually think about the accepted answer to a problem, find flaws in that answer and then try to find their own answer that better fits the problem more completely. With this text, students could live vicariously through Darwin as he discovered his many contributions to science. To connect writing to this concept, students could put themselves in Darwin’s shoes when he came upon his theory of evolution. They could reflect on how Darwin felt. This would allow them to think critically about the time period and the experience.

**Darwin Correspondence Project. University of Cambridge. 2013**. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
 * Biology: **

The Darwin Correspondence Project website was created by many different teachers, specialists in certain fields, and students from the United States and England. The site contains more than 15,000 letters and a basic description of what each one is about. The letters are from Darwin or written to him.

I feel this site is very beneficial since it allows students to see writings that Charles Darwin created and his interaction with many influential scientists. This site I also think is very usefully for teachers since it provides lessons that use his letters. In the school resources section, they break it down into four different sections, English, history, science and religious education. They also have “cross curricular packs” that have a few subjects in each.

One of the “cross curricular packs” I really liked was the “Darwin’s: Scientific Women” pack which were women who influenced and contributed to Darwin’s research. They were well known botanists, travelers, observers, writers and naturalists and the site gives a summary about who each of them were. It also provides activities that have students answer certain topic questions by reading their corresponding letters.

__<span style="color: #b36c0f; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Secondary sources __
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Charles Darwin: 1809-1882**. Retrieved December 3, 2013.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">History: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I thought that this brief biography of Charles Darwin would be a very beneficial source to students who want to learn more about Darwin and his studies. Even though this is brief I feel as though it contains a lot of useful information that students could use for reports on him. This biography gives details about Darwin’s life that may not be common knowledge but would be important if you were doing a report on him. One aspect of the biography that I really liked is the fact that it gives more details about his works and how society accepted his new views. I feel that it is important that students understand how momentous it was for Darwin to state his ideas about evolution because of the fact that they were so unheard of and so unaccepted during that time. I feel as though this would be beneficial to students because it gives them a brief background of Darwin’s history and it also gives them a peek into what life was like during that era. I feel as though that is one of the most important aspects of history, making students see events through the eyes of the people who lived them.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Industrial Revolution**. History.com. Retrieved December 3, 2013

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This secondary source is all about the Industrial Revolution and contains information about the effects it had on the environment. I feel like this would be an excellent source for students to use after they read “Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith” because it may help explain some of the ailments the Darwin’s suffered from. In the article it talks about how London was one of the first industrialized centers of the world and that many large factories there along the waterways and polluting the air. This may bring about the question, was Industrialization a factor for many illnesses during that era? For history students this would be a very large topic of discussion because the effects of the Industrial Revolution are very much contested and discussed. I think that by using this book and having the student some excerpts from the reading they can learn more and help figure out how cause and effect worked as related to Industrialization and some of the side effects that they caused. I feel like this article would be appropriate for both students and fellow teachers because even though it is written in simpler language it goes into much detail.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Owen, Richard. 1860. Darwin on the Origin of Species. Edinburgh Review, 3, 1860, pp.487-532**. Retrieved December 5, 2013
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Geology: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Richard Owen’s review of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin is a great example of a useful secondary source. In this document Owen picks out sections of text from The Origin of Species and emphasizes many important concepts and facts that Darwin brings up, explains how Darwin could have enhances some ideas, shows where Darwin was extremely through in his scientific exploration and explains how and why Darwin was so well respected by his peers. What is so great about this text is that it takes all of the important parts of Darwin’s book, breaks them down, and explains them. If a teacher just wants to learn about Darwin’s work with coral reefs and doesn’t have time to sit down and amble through the whole Origins of Species book, they can simply search this document and find that Darwin was able to show that some coral reef that he came across on his voyage were over 30,000 years old. This information can be integrated into lessons on how we know how old the Earth is.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This text is very interesting, but may be difficult for a 9th grader to understand. I would use this book as a teacher resource to expand their own knowledge base about evolution, how the Earth works, and to give historical background information. It could be adapted to use in a classroom, but students would need to be given additional information to fully comprehend the text.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Gibson, Sally. "Early Settler - Darwin the Geologist in the Galapagos." Geoscience Online. The Geological Society, February 19, 2009**. Web. December 5, 2013.

Charles Darwin is so well known for his discovery of the theory of evolution that it’s sometimes forgotten that he actually made some great advancements in the field of geology as well. What many people don’t know is that over 75% of Darwin’s notes from his Beagle voyage consist of geological observations. This source focuses on what the geologic society gained from his findings during his trip around the world. Because it is more difficult to find resources connected to Darwin from a geologic perspective, rather than a biological one, it makes this website even more valuable. From a literacy perspective, this article is interesting because it has maps next to the text, putting the information into a more accessible form.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Connecting this article to Charles and Emma can be done in many ways. Both the book and article talk about Captain. Robert FitzRoy and John Stevens Henslow. In this light, the article can be used to inform students of the characters, outside of the book setting. This can help the students see that the people they’re reading about aren’t just names on a page, they were real people that knew each other and worked together (or against each other) to advance science and society in their view. This article is also useful to help fill in students’ knowledge about what it was like to live on the HMS Beagle. It can be used, in conjunction with the Darwin Online website, to show how Darwin took notes about the local geology. Connecting this to literacy could be done by outlining the way Darwin took field notes, finding a template, and then having students look at rocks and create their own field notebook from their observations.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Biology**: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Few Risks Seen To the Children Of 1st Cousins. //The New York Times//**. Retrieved December 7, 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“Few Risks Seen to the Children of 1st Cousins” was an article written by Denise Grady in April 2002. This article states the facts about first cousins having offspring. In the book, Charles and Emma, they are identified as being first cousins from the beginning and throughout the book, it talks about the ten offspring they end up having. This article provides great information for teachers who will have their students read this book. It allows them to learn the genetic facts about two cousins mating and statistics of first cousin marriages. As Charles and Emma's first cousin relationship is fully established in the beginning of the book, the teacher might get many questions of this subject since it’s not often seen in our society.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Origin of Species. Charles Darwin, 1859**. Retrieved December 6. 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Origin of Species was a book that Charles Darwin wrote and was published in 1859. Librivox is a non-commercial, non-profit and ad-free project. Volunteers donate their time and read chapters of books in the public domain and then the audio files are released back into the net for the public to hear. In Charles and Emma, The Darwins’ Leap of Faith, Heiligman writes about the time period when Charles was writing the book and when it was finally published. A teacher can use this site and play different clips from the Origin of Species so the students can get a feel of what the book is about. A teacher can also use the recording to gain more knowledge about the Origin of Species, instead of spending the time of reading it. = =

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__<span style="color: #b36c0f; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Video & Website resources __
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**//History//:** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Charles Darwin- The Shocking Book. The Biography Channel.** Retrieved December 8, 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This source is not just a video source but it also gives a synopsis of Darwin’s life. The video goes more in depth about his life and his adventures which gives the viewer greater insight as to who the man was. In the video it not only tells the viewer what Darwin’s experiences were like, such as the voyage on the HMS Beagle and his home life, it also shows images that better help connect the viewer with what Darwin was really experiencing. I think that by using videos it will help to show the students more the historical aspect of “Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith” because they will be able to see the history. It may be difficult for some students to develop images of events just by reading them and that is why watching videos can better connect the gap that may occur. By using interesting images, videos and commentary it will help the students better relate the book to actual events that occurred. Images are very powerful and this biography of Charles Darwin is an interesting way to convey information to students.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Galapagos: Beyond Darwin: Charles Darwin. The Science Channel**. Retrieved December 8, 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I think that this video source is an excellent addition to the curriculum of both history and science because it goes into so much detail dealing with both subjects. I feel that this video gives great detail as to the voyage that Darwin took on the HMS Beagle that changed the views of both science and also shook the religious foundations that people held so firmly to during Darwin’s era. This video gives an excellent account of Darwin’s journey but it also gave details as to how his ideas were accepted by not only the scientific society but also the generally populous. This video is a very important addition to the book because it shows the viewer just how controversial his ideas were. I think that it would be interesting to show this to a history class and have them write a brief passage as if they were a person of that time, whether it be a person of the scientific field learning of his ideas for the first time or a person that has very religious views, how would that person feel about Darwin’s theories of evolution. It is important for students to take subjective looks at information particularly in the historical and scientific fields and I feel like this video will aid them in doing so.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**AboutDarwin.com**. Retrieved December 8, 2013

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This website is a very interesting one for both history and science teachers because it is all about Charles Darwin and his explorations and life. One of the first things that I saw was the details about the journey of the HMS Beagle, where it travelled to and how it made its journey from stop to stop. The whole website is about different aspects of Darwin’s life from his scientific explorations and discoveries to the timeline of his life. This website is very in depth but it is also very simple to navigate. This fact is very important when you are teaching students who may not be very technically savvy. I feel like this would be a suitable source for both teachers and students because it would give the teachers a very interactive and fun way to get the students involved in all that they are trying to teach them. It would be interesting for the students to compare and contrast the book and this website and perhaps develop a project from what they have learned on it.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//**Geology**//: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Lichtman, F., S. Shattuck. (November 4, 2013). The Animated Life of A. R. Wallace. The New York Times Op-Docs**. Retrieved November 20, 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This video, from the New York Times, shows the viewer the life of Alfred Russell Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin. Wallace, who played a fairly large role in Charles and Emma, had the same idea about natural selection as Darwin. This video shows how Wallace came to his conclusions in a student friendly format; the whole video is done with paper puppets and narrations in the background. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As a classroom tool this video could be used to show that many scientists can be working on the same idea at the same time. There’s no rule that says only one scientists can work on a problem. Another way that this video could be put to use is through the creation of a biography for Wallace. Students could be asked to pick a scientist from the Charles and Emma book and create a biography. On that list of scientists would absolutely be Wallace because he is the reason Darwin finally produced his Origin of Species book. I really feel that this video would be entertaining and interesting to students and it would be a good way to get them excited to learn about evolution.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Gravitationalist. (2007, April 14). Evolution Primer #7: Why Is Evolution Controversial Anyway?**. Youtube. Retrieved December 6, 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Teaching in the public school brings with it a diverse range of things that a teacher has to be sensitive to. One of the most difficult parts about teaching evolution is reconciling science and religion. This video is a great way to show students why creationism or intelligent design is not taught in the classroom. It explains that things like evolution and a heliocentric solar system have been accepted by the Christian churches (with some fundamentalists being the exception.) Having the information come from a group of Christian kids and adults as well as from scientists may help students with a religious background wrap their mind around evolution more easily. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In relation to Charles and Emma this video can show how we have progressed as a society, from one where Charles did not want to publish a book about natural selection for fear of the religious backlash to one that has tested and accepted evolution as scientific theory. Compared to Darwin’s times, we can see that religion and science have grown to be more accepting of one another. This source could be used to enhance literacy by having students fill out a similarities and differences chart and then writing a short essay, drawing from the chart.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Charles and Emma The Darwins’ Leap of Faith**. Squarefish. Macmillian. 2013. Web. December 4, 2013

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This web resource is actually a place where one could buy the Charles and Emma book, but I like it as an introduction to the book. This is because it gives a summary of the themes in the book, an opening to what the book is about, reviews for the book, and an excerpt from the book, which can give the reader a feel for the way, it’s written. This could be used to introduce the book to a class. It could even be used in multiple classes where one teacher looks at the history they will be learning about and one looks at it from a science perspective. That way, the students can see that this book has many facets within it that they will be looking at while they’re reading it. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Another way this could be incorporated into the class is by having students use the reviews given as templates or examples. Once they finish Charles and Emma they could write their own review of it. This would allow them to show their comprehension of the book as well as giving them a chance to express themselves.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Honner, Patrick, and Katherine Schulten. "Text to Text | Einstein and ‘Where Science and Religion Coexist’." The Learning Network. The New York Times, Oct. 30 2013.** Web. Dec. 5, 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As stated earlier, the public school has a diverse range of students with a wide variety of ideas and beliefs. To nip any possible issues in the bud, it’s important to show students that science and religion can coexist peacefully. This New York Times website I found gives three genres of communication about this topic: an article written by Albert Einstein about religion and science from November 1930, a video with Richard Feynman about his ideas on God from 1994, and an article about the collaboration of Buddhist scholars and scientists from January 2013. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This site is ready made for the classroom including lesson plan ideas and worksheets to enhance literacy. It offers a double entry journal worksheet, an outline on how to compare two or more texts and a document analysis question worksheet. Having the three different genres of text is a great literacy tool because it shows different ideas in different ways all focusing on the same topic. The setup of the website makes it easy to adapt the texts and video into a lesson on religion and science.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//**Biology**//:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Creation. Dir. Jon Amiel. BBC Films, 2009. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Creation is a movie directed by Jon Amiel and stars Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin and Jennifer Connely as Emma Darwin. Its plot is similar to the book and shows the struggles to reconcile religious views and his beliefs, especially after the death of his doctor. This movie is PG-13 and is an hour and forty-eight minutes. This movie would be a great source for a teacher to help display certain scenes from the book. The movie has many overlapping themes and the teacher can show certain scenes from the movie to strength the key points from the book. The students will also be able to see the points from a visually perspective which might help them to understand the content better. A teacher who can show the whole movie, can also have them create a Venn diagram, comparing and contrasting the movie to the book.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Virtual HMS Beagle 3D Darwin Mirage3D.** Robin Sip. Youtube. Retrieved December 7, 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This YouTube clip was created by the account of Robin Sip. It is a forty second animation of what the HMS beagle looked like. It shows what the top and bottom deck looks like and then at the end of the video shows the whole ship. The HMS beagle was the ship Charles Darwin volunteered to be on and provided him with many experiences that affected the rest of his life and research. I envision this movie would be used as a great attention-grabbing device for a lesson on Charles Darwin experience on the HMS Beagle. A teacher can show this video and hang out question sheet that students can start thinking about what the voyage was like and the items seen on the boat. Also a teacher could have them draw what they think the boat would look like first and then show them the video.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Darwin’s Footsteps. The Association for Science Education**. Retrieved December 8, 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Darwin’s Footsteps is an interactive story and game about Charles Darwin voyage on the HMS Beagle. It has the student pick between a girl and a boy at the beginning and their character goes on the same voyage Darwin went on and shows through games, facts and taking pictures, the importance at each stop. At the end of the story, students can review the material after traveling around the world. This game would be a fun activity for students to do to understand the HMS beagle voyage. The teacher can make a worksheet that corresponds to the game that students can use throughout the game. A teacher would need twenty – thirty minutes of allotted time for their students to finish the game and would be better for a middle school classroom. I really like how theirs a short game and facts about the location and animals relating to Darwin’s voyage at each stop.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Charles Darwin’s Game of Survival. Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy, Robert M. Hazen and James Trefil**. Retrieved December 9, 2013.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This site provides an interactive experience about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by Natural Selection. It provides a lesson of natural selection, a survival game, a quiz, bio of Darwin, and a glossary of key terms. For a student to win “Who Wants To Live A Million Years”, they need to apply the information they learned in the lesson. A teacher could use this interactive site to teach their students about natural selection. It will provide the students with important information about Natural Selection but also has a fun game students can play with the information they learned. It also provides a quiz where a teacher can have them hand in and can assess what the individual learned. A complementary worksheet can also be created for a participation assessment.