|
Using
NewsHour Extra Feature Stories
Overview:
NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret
key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period,
but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.
Warm Up: Use
initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your
students know.
Main Activity:
Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions
on the reading comprehension handout.
Discussion:
Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the
issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate
different opinions.
Follow-up: Students
can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and
send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]
for possible publication.
Evaluation:
Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions
and/or their editorial.
Story:
Fish Fossil Discovery Could Solve Evolution Mystery, 04/10/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/fossil-fish_4-10.html
Initiating Questions:
1. What is evolution?
2. According to the theory, how did humans evolve?
3. What is the evidence in support of evolution?
4. What are some opposing viewpoints?
Reading Comprehension
Questions: (click
here for printout)
1. What was recently
discovered in Canada?
Scientists have
discovered the fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish that lived in
water but moved on land that may be the "missing link" between
fish and walking land animals.
2. Why do the scientists
who found the fossil believe it is a link between fish and land mammals?
The creature,
a giant, scaly fish believed to be 4 feet to 9 feet long, lived in shallow
water, scientists believe, but had certain features of a mammal, including
bones in its front fin that look like a shoulder, an elbow, a forearm
and a wrist.
The animal occasionally
used its unique fins to move over land, says Ted Daeschler, one of the
paleontologists who made the discovery.
"And that's what is particularly important here. The animal is
developing features which will eventually allow animals to exploit land,"
Daeschler told the NewsHour.
3. Why do scientists
call their discovery a fishopod?
Scientists are whimsically
calling it a "fishopod" -- part fish, part tetropod, or four-legged
animal.
4. Describe the Tiktaalik.
Believed to be
a meat eater, Tiktaalik had a flat, crocodile-like head with eyes on
top instead of on the side. It had a neck and ribs and, like mammals,
its head could move around on its shoulders. It probably had lungs and
gills allowing it to breath on land and in water.
Researchers have
not discovered the tail end of Tiktaalik's body and so do not know what
the tail or hind fins may have looked like.
The creature
would have spent most of its time in the water but could move onto land
for brief excursions.
5. What do evolutionists
believe?
The scientists
involved in the discovery have not directly entered the creationist-evolution
debate. But other scientists say the finding bolsters Darwin's theory
that life evolved from nature and adapted over time.
6. What do religious
creationists believe?
Religious creationists,
on the other hand, believe that humans did not evolve from other animals,
but were instead created by God.
Creationists
have claimed that the absence of transitional creatures weakens Darwin's
theory. Evolutionists say Tiktaalik is a key piece of the evolution
puzzle.
Discussion Activity
(more research might be needed):
1. What is the difference
between a fish and a mammal? How could a fish have evolved into a mammal?
How does the Tiktaalik fit into the picture?
2. What does a paleontologist
do? Does that sound like an interesting career? Why or why not?
3. Do you think the
Tiktaalik "proves" Darwin's Theory of Evolution? Why or why
not?
Write a 300-500
word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your
completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional
essays might be published on our Web site.
|