Overview

Lesson Procedure

75-75 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice20 minutes
5. Closure10 minutes

1. Warm-Up10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "A famous scholar's thesis has been quoted for a century. What would you check before using it as evidence in your own paper, and what would make you trust it more, or less?"

   Collect answers and sort them into three questions the lesson will keep asking: What does the evidence actually establish? What does the writer make it stand for? What do other sources say? In grades 11-12, WHST.9 asks students to answer all three in writing, for analysis, reflection and research.

   Introduce Source 1. Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932), a historian at the University of Wisconsin, read this paper in 1893 to the American Historical Association in Chicago. Historians have argued over it ever since, and it is known as the "frontier thesis." Turner begins with a bulletin from the census of 1890. Read Source 1 aloud, then ask: What is Turner's thesis, and what is the only evidence in paragraph 1?

   1In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports." This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.

   [...]

   2The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the European frontier--a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. The most significant thing about the American frontier is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land. In the census reports it is treated as the margin of that settlement which has a density of two or more to the square mile. The term is an elastic one, and for our purposes does not need sharp definition. We shall consider the whole frontier belt, including the Indian country and the outer margin of the "settled area" of the census reports. This paper will make no attempt to treat the subject exhaustively; its aim is simply to call attention to the frontier as a fertile field for investigation, and to suggest some of the problems which arise in connection with it.

   [...]

   3By 1880 the settled area had been pushed into northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, along Dakota rivers, and in the Black Hills region, and was ascending the rivers of Kansas and Nebraska. The development of mines in Colorado had drawn isolated frontier settlements into that region, and Montana and Idaho were receiving settlers. The frontier was found in these mining camps and the ranches of the Great Plains. The superintendent of the census for 1890 reports, as previously stated, that the settlements of the West lie so scattered over the region that there can no longer be said to be a frontier line.

   4In these successive frontiers we find natural boundary lines which have served to mark and to affect the characteristics of the frontiers, namely: the "fall line;" the Alleghany Mountains; the Mississippi; the Missouri where its direction approximates north and south; the line of the arid lands, approximately the ninety-ninth meridian; and the Rocky Mountains. The fall line marked the frontier of the seventeenth century; the Alleghanies that of the eighteenth; the Mississippi that of the first quarter of the nineteenth; the Missouri that of the middle of this century (omitting the California movement); and the belt of the Rocky Mountains and the arid tract, the present frontier. Each was won by a series of Indian wars.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   WHST.11-12.9 asks students to draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection and research, applying the grade 11-12 reading standards for history and science. Those raise the bar in three ways:

   • Connect details to the whole. A quotation is evidence about the text's argument, not just about one sentence. Ask how a detail supports, strains or contradicts the thesis.
   • Note gaps and inconsistencies. Say what the writer leaves out or where two parts of the text do not fit.
   • Corroborate or challenge. Test a writer's claims against other sources, and verify numbers when you can.

   Reflection and research use the same evidence: reflection says what the evidence made you notice or rethink; research turns a gap into a question and names the source that could answer it. Work through three models with Sources 1 and 2.

   • Analysis: a detail that strains the whole

     Turner reports the census definition of the frontier as "the margin of that settlement which has a density of two or more to the square mile," then adds, "The term is an elastic one, and for our purposes does not need sharp definition" (Source 1, paragraph 2).

     Result: Analysis: the thesis that a frontier had "closed" depends on the census's sharp line, yet Turner's own analysis uses an elastic belt. Written up: "Turner borrows the census's precision to announce that the frontier has ended, then sets that precision aside when he studies what the frontier was, so his evidence for the closing and his definition of the thing that closed do not match."

   • Reflection: reading a moral judgment as evidence

     Jackson writes of the government's dealings with the tribes: "The robbery, the cruelty which were done under the cloak of this hundred years of treaty-making and treaty-breaking, are greater than can be told" (Source 2, paragraph 1).

     Result: Reflection: "Jackson's sentence made me notice that Turner's paragraphs contain no judgments at all about how the land changed hands. Reading her, I began to wonder whether a calm, neutral tone can also be a kind of choice about what to leave out." The reflection is anchored in the quoted words and in a comparison it prompts.

   • Research: corroborating a factual claim

     Jackson states that in 1871 Congress "passed an act to the effect that no Indian tribe should hereafter be considered as a foreign nation with whom the United States might contract by treaty" and added a proviso about treaties already made (Source 2, paragraph 2).

     Result: Research question: What exactly did the 1871 act say? Jackson paraphrases it ("to the effect that"), so a researcher checks the act's own words in the U.S. Statutes at Large before quoting her version. A paraphrase is a lead, not the last word, and checking it also shows whether the proviso reads as she says.

   Read Source 2. Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) was a poet and novelist who researched government reports and treaties for A Century of Dishonor (1881). Diagram 1 places every source in the lesson on one time line. Then read Text A, a model synthesis paragraph. Have students mark where it quotes each source, where it connects a detail to Turner's whole thesis, where it corroborates and where it challenges, and the one sentence that reflects.

   1The statement is undoubtedly a true one, that the Indians, having been placed in the anomalous position as tribes, of "domestic dependent nations," and as individuals, in the still more anomalous position of adult "wards," have not legally possessed the treaty-making power. Our right to put them, or to consider them to be in those anomalous positions, might be successfully disputed; but they, helpless, having accepted such positions, did, no doubt, thereby lose their right to be treated with as nations. Nevertheless, that is neither here nor there now: as soon as our Government was established, it proceeded to treat with them as nations by name and designation, and with precisely the same forms and ratifications that it used in treating with other nations; and it continued to treat with them as nations by name and designation, and with continually increasing solemnity of asseveration of good intent and good faith, for nearly a century. The robbery, the cruelty which were done under the cloak of this hundred years of treaty-making and treaty-breaking, are greater than can be told. Neither mountains nor deserts stayed them; it took two seas to set their bounds.

   2In 1871, Congress, either ashamed of making treaties only to break them, or grudging the time, money, and paper it wasted, passed an act to the effect that no Indian tribe should hereafter be considered as a foreign nation with whom the United States might contract by treaty. There seems to have been at the time, in the minds of the men who passed this act, a certain shadowy sense of some obligation being involved in treaties; for they added to the act a proviso that it should not be construed as invalidating any treaties already made. But this sense of obligation must have been as short-lived as shadowy, and could have had no element of shame in it, since they forthwith proceeded, unabashed, to negotiate still more treaties with Indians, and break them; for instance, the so-called "Brunot Treaty" with the Ute Indians in Colorado, and one with the Crow Indians in Montana—both made in the summer of 1873. They were called at the time "conventions" or "agreements," and not "treaties;" but the difference is only in name.

   [...]

   3There is but one hope of righting this wrong. It lies in appeal to the heart and the conscience of the American people. What the people demand, Congress will do. It has been—to our shame be it spoken—at the demand of part of the people that all these wrongs have been committed, these treaties broken, these robberies done, by the Government.

   4So long as there remains on our frontier one square mile of land occupied by a weak and helpless owner, there will be a strong and unscrupulous frontiersman ready to seize it, and a weak and unscrupulous politician, who can be hired for a vote or for money, to back him.

   1[1] Turner rests his thesis on the phrase "free land," and details in his own paper, read beside Helen Hunt Jackson's book, show how much that phrase leaves out. [2] Paragraph 1 makes the land the engine of the whole argument: "The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development" (Source 1). [3] Yet Turner's frontier belt includes "the Indian country" (paragraph 2), and he closes his survey by noting that each natural boundary "was won by a series of Indian wars" (paragraph 4). [4] Land that had to be won by war was not free; it was taken, and Turner's own details say so even though his thesis does not. [5] Jackson, writing twelve years earlier, describes the same frontier from the other side: wherever "one square mile of land occupied by a weak and helpless owner" remained, "a strong and unscrupulous frontiersman" stood "ready to seize it" (Source 2, paragraph 4). [6] Corroborated by Turner's own admission and challenged by Jackson's account, "free land" looks less like a description of the West than like the settlers' point of view, adopted as the historian's. [7] Writing this paragraph showed me how much a single adjective in a thesis can decide what a historian goes on to study, and what he leaves out.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Science writing asks the same questions of hypotheses, data and conclusions. Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), a Swedish chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903, first calculated the warming effect of carbon dioxide in 1896. Source 3 is his explanation for general readers, published in English in 1908. Terms: permeable to heat means letting heat radiation pass; dark heat rays are infrared radiation; a hot-house is a greenhouse; carbonic acid here is carbon dioxide gas. Temperatures are in degrees Celsius. Pairs read Source 3 and mark each claim as hypothesis, data, calculation or conclusion.

   1That the atmospheric envelopes limit the heat losses from the planets had been suggested about 1800 by the great French physicist Fourier. His ideas were further developed afterwards by Pouillet and Tyndall. Their theory has been styled the hot-house theory, because they thought that the atmosphere acted after the manner of the glass panes of hot-houses. Glass possesses the property of being transparent to heat rays of small wave lengths belonging to the visible spectrum; but it is not transparent to dark heat rays, such, for instance, as are sent out by a heated furnace or by a hot lump of earth. The heat rays of the sun now are to a large extent of the visible, bright kind. They penetrate through the glass of the hot-house and heat the earth under the glass. The radiation from the earth, on the other hand, is dark and cannot pass back through the glass, which thus stops any losses of heat, just as an overcoat protects the body against too strong a loss of heat by radiation. Langley made an experiment with a box, which he packed with cotton-wool to reduce loss by radiation, and which he provided, on the side turned towards the sun, with a double glass pane. He observed that the temperature rose to 113° (235° F.), while the thermometer only marked 14° or 15° (57° or 59° F.) in the shade. This experiment was conducted on Pike’s Peak, in Colorado, at an altitude of 4200 m. (13,800 ft.), on September 9, 1881, at 1 hr. 4 min. P.M., and therefore at a particularly intense solar radiation.

   2Fourier and Pouillet now thought that the atmosphere of our earth should be endowed with properties resembling those of glass, as regards permeability of heat. Tyndall later proved this assumption to be correct. The chief invisible constituents of the air which participate in this effect are water vapor, which is always found in a certain quantity in the air, and carbonic acid, also ozone and hydrocarbons. These latter occur in such small quantities that no allowance has been made for them so far in the calculations. Of late, however, we have been supplied with very careful observations on the permeability to heat of carbonic acid and of water vapor. With the help of these data I have calculated that if the atmosphere were deprived of all its carbonic acid—of which it contains only 0.03 per cent. by volume—the temperature of the earth’s surface would fall by about 21°. This lowering of the temperature would diminish the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, and would cause a further almost equally strong fall of temperature. The examples, so far as they go, demonstrate that comparatively unimportant variations in the composition of the air have a very great influence. If the quantity of carbonic acid in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4°; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8°. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth’s surface by 4°; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8°. Further, a diminution of the carbonic acid percentage would accentuate the temperature differences between the different portions of the earth, while an increase in this percentage would tend to equalize the temperature.

   • Analysis: a small amount, a large effect

     Arrhenius notes that the air contains "only 0.03 per cent. by volume" of carbonic acid, then concludes that "comparatively unimportant variations in the composition of the air have a very great influence" (Source 3, paragraph 2).

     Result: Written as analysis: "Arrhenius's central move is a distinction between how much of a gas the air holds and how much that gas matters. By pairing the tiny percentage with a large calculated temperature change, he argues that size is the wrong test of importance." The detail and the conclusion are connected; whether the calculation holds is a separate question.

   • Research: tracing a claim to its source

     Arrhenius writes that "Tyndall later proved this assumption to be correct" and that "we have been supplied with very careful observations on the permeability to heat of carbonic acid and of water vapor" (Source 3, paragraph 2).

     Result: His calculation rests on other scientists' measurements that the passage does not describe or name. A research note: "Question: What did Tyndall measure, and whose observations did Arrhenius use? Sources: Tyndall's published lectures on heat, and a history of climate science that explains Arrhenius's 1896 calculation."

   Pairs fill in the claim chart for Source 3. In the last column they write strong, partial or not shown here, with a reason.

   Claim chart for Source 3 (pairs fill in the blank cells)

   Claim in Source 3	Type (hypothesis, data, calculation, conclusion)	Evidence in the passage	Supported how far in this passage?
   The atmosphere acts like the glass of a hot-house (paragraph 1)
   Tyndall proved the air's gases behave that way (paragraph 2)
   Removing all carbonic acid would cool the earth by about 21° (paragraph 2)
   Doubling carbonic acid would warm the earth by 4° (paragraph 2)

   Row 2 is modeled in the second example above; Quiz Question 8 checks row 1, so that answer is in the quiz key. Diagram 2 plots Arrhenius's predictions for halving, quartering, doubling and quadrupling the carbonic acid. Ask: what pattern do the points follow, and what would a reader need to know before trusting the line beyond the points he gives?

4. Independent Practice20 minutes

   Read Source 4, which follows Source 3 directly. Terms: the Eocene is a warm geological epoch that began about 56 million years ago; the glacial age is the most recent series of ice ages. Then read Text B, a weak draft of a research memo about Sources 3 and 4.

   For each sentence of Text B, students name the problem, choosing from: OVR (overclaim: says more than the source), FQ (floating quotation), MR (misreads the source), NS (no source for an outside fact), ST (stretch: a gap treated as a refutation or a limited result as a general one) and AU (treats agreement by authorities as proof). Then they rewrite the memo as a paragraph of 150-200 words that evaluates how well Sources 3 and 4 support Arrhenius's hypothesis, cites both, verifies one number and ends with a research question.

   Key for the teacher: [2] FQ; [3] MR (Source 4 says the sea "takes up about five-sixths"); [4] NS and MR (no source is named, and "exactly" is false: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2021 report gives a best estimate of 3 °C for a doubling, with a likely range of 2.5-4 °C); [5] ST (a limit he states is not a reason to reject every result). Quiz Question 19 checks sentence [1], and Quiz Question 12 checks the reasoning behind sentence [6], so those answers are in the quiz key.

   The quiz uses Sources 1-4 and Texts A and B. Paragraph numbers match the numbers beside each source.

   1The question, however, is whether any such temperature fluctuations have really been observed on the surface of the earth. The geologists would answer: yes. Our historical era was preceded by a period in which the mean temperature was by 2° (3.6 F.) higher than at present. We recognize this from the former distribution of the ordinary hazel-nut and of the water-nut (Trapa natans). Fossil nuts of these two species have been found in localities where the plants could not thrive in the present climate. This age, again, was preceded by an age which, we are pretty certain, drove the inhabitants of northern Europe from their old abodes. The glacial age must have been divided into several periods, alternating with intervals of milder climates, the so-called inter-glacial periods. The space of time which is characterized by these glacial periods, when the temperature—according to measurements based upon the study of the spreading of glaciers in the Alps—must have been about 5° (8° F.) lower than now, has been estimated by geologists at not less than 100,000 years. This epoch was preceded by a warmer age, in which the temperature, to judge from fossilized plants of those days, must at times have been by 8° or 9° (14° or 16° F.) higher than at present, and, moreover, much more uniformly distributed over the whole earth (Eocene). Pronounced fluctuations of this kind in the climate have also occurred in former geological periods.

   2Are we now justified in supposing that the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air has varied to an extent sufficient to account for the temperature changes? This question has been answered in the affirmative by Högbom, and, in later times, by Stevenson. The actual percentage of carbonic acid in the air is so insignificant that the annual combustion of coal, which has now (1904) risen to about 900 million tons and is rapidly increasing,[3] carries about one-seven-hundredth part of its percentage of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Although the sea, by absorbing carbonic acid, acts as a regulator of huge capacity, which takes up about five-sixths of the produced carbonic acid, we yet recognize that the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may by the advances of industry be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries. That would imply that there is no real stability in the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air, which is probably subject to considerable fluctuations in the course of time.

   3[Footnote 3: It amounted in 1890 to 510 million tons; in 1894, to 550; in 1899, to 690; and in 1904, to 890 million tons.]

   1[1] Arrhenius proved in 1908 that burning coal causes global warming. [2] "The geologists would answer: yes." [3] According to Arrhenius, the sea absorbs almost none of the carbonic acid produced by burning coal (Source 4, paragraph 2). [4] His prediction that doubling the carbon dioxide would raise the temperature by 4° matches modern estimates exactly. [5] Arrhenius admits that his calculations leave out ozone and hydrocarbons, so none of his numbers can be trusted. [6] Högbom and Stevenson agreed with him, so there is no need to check their work.

5. Closure10 minutes

   Exit ticket: (1) Choose one claim from Source 1 or Source 3. Write one sentence that corroborates it and one that challenges it, each with a cited quotation from another source in the lesson. (2) Reflection: which source in the lesson would you trust least on its own, and why?

   Hand out the homework sources below: the last paragraph of Turner's paper (Source 5) and the end of Arrhenius's chapter (Source 6).

   Teacher notes: (1) Turner and Jackson use the terms of their time, such as "Indian," "the Indian country" and "wilderness," and Jackson's "weak and helpless owner" portrays Native nations as powerless. The excerpts contain no slurs. The first [...] in Source 1 leaves out, among other material, a sentence in which Turner describes the frontier in the racial language of the 1890s; preview the full paper before assigning it, and discuss how historians since have criticized the thesis for leaving Native peoples out of its story of "free land." (2) Source 6 ends with Arrhenius's hope for "better climates" and "much more abundant crops." Let students weigh the prediction against what they find in their research; the homework asks them to reflect on reading a forecast after its time. (3) Modern figures for Activity 2 and Homework Problem 4 should come from the sources students cite; teachers can check them against NOAA's carbon dioxide records and the 2021 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (4) Advanced students may compare the hot-house analogy in Source 3 with the physicist Robert W. Wood's 1909 greenhouse experiment, which suggested that real greenhouses stay warm mainly because the glass stops warm air from escaping.

   1From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. The works of travelers along each frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom--these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The stubborn American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.

   1Since, now, warm ages have alternated with glacial periods, even after man appeared on the earth, we have to ask ourselves: Is it probable that we shall in the coming geological ages be visited by a new ice period that will drive us from our temperate countries into the hotter climates of Africa? There does not appear to be much ground for such an apprehension. The enormous combustion of coal by our industrial establishments suffices to increase the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air to a perceptible degree. Volcanism, whose devastations— on Krakatoa (1883) and Martinique (1902)—have been terrible in late years, appears to be growing more intense. It is probable, therefore, that the percentage of carbonic acid increases at a rapid rate. Another circumstance points in the same direction; that is, that the sea seems to withdraw carbonic acid from the air. For the carbonic acid percentage above the sea and on islands is on an average 10 per cent. less than the above continents.

   [...]

   2If the carbonic acid percentage of the air had kept constant for ages, the percentage of the water would have found time to get into equilibrium with it; but the sea actually absorbs carbonic acid from the air. Thus the sea-water must have been in equilibrium with an atmosphere which contained less carbonic acid than the present atmosphere. Hence the carbonic acid percentage has been increasing of late.

   3We often hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case, there is good mixed with the evil. By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 1 of Source 1, what evidence does Turner give for his claim that the census statement "marks the closing of a great historic movement"?

   APopulation counts for each of the western states and territories from the 1890 census BLetters from settlers describing the end of cheap western land CA single official statement about how the census would report settlement DHis own survey of the public land still open to homesteaders

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Read the census bulletin that Turner quotes in paragraph 1 of Source 1. What does the bulletin itself say will no longer happen?

   ASettlers will no longer be able to claim any public land in the West BThe western territories will no longer be admitted as states CSettlement of the West will no longer continue at its old pace DThe frontier line will no longer have a place in census reports

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 2 of Source 1, Turner says his paper's "aim is simply to call attention to the frontier as a fertile field for investigation." How does this sentence relate to his claim in paragraph 1 that free land and westward settlement "explain American development"?

   AIt offers as a proposal for research what paragraph 1 states as a conclusion BIt repeats the claim made in paragraph 1 in plainer words for general readers CIt shows that Turner has already completed the investigation he calls for DIt withdraws the claim of paragraph 1 and replaces it with a new thesis

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 2 of Source 2, Jackson says the 1873 "conventions" or "agreements" differed from treaties "only in name." What evidence for that judgment does this excerpt contain?

   AA full comparison of the terms of the agreements and the older treaties BStatements from the Ute and Crow leaders who accepted the 1873 terms COnly the names and dates of two agreements, so a reader must check their terms DThe complete text of the 1871 act, quoted word for word from the U.S. statute book

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Jackson opens paragraph 1 of Source 2 with a concession: "The statement is undoubtedly a true one" that the tribes "have not legally possessed the treaty-making power." How does she turn the concession to her advantage?

   AShe argues that Congress never actually passed any such law BShe holds the government to a century of treating tribes as nations CShe argues that the tribes should have refused to sign any of the treaties offered DShe argues that no other nation ever made treaties with the tribes

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 3 of Source 2, Jackson says the wrongs were done "at the demand of part of the people," and she interrupts the sentence with "to our shame be it spoken." What do these words show a researcher about the source?

   AJackson blames the tribes themselves for the treaties that were broken BJackson writes as an advocate trying to move her readers CJackson has counted how many citizens supported each broken treaty DJackson believes that Congress acted against the wishes of all the people

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Jackson's book first appeared in 1881, and Turner read his paper in 1893. Why does this order matter when a student uses Source 2 to challenge Source 1?

   AA published critique of how the land was taken existed before Turner wrote BIt shows that Jackson was replying directly to the thesis of Turner's paper CIt shows that Source 2 is less reliable than Source 1 because it is older DIt means Source 2 cannot be used, since it appeared before the 1890 census

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 1 of Source 3, Langley's box, packed with cotton-wool and covered by a double pane of glass, reached 113° while a thermometer in the shade read 14° or 15°. What does this experiment show, as Arrhenius reports it?

   AThat the air's carbonic acid holds in heat in exactly the same way as glass BThat sunlight is much stronger on a mountain than it is at sea level CThat the cotton-wool packing, not the glass, is what warmed the box DThat glass over a closed box can hold in heat from strong sunlight

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 2 of Source 3, Arrhenius calculates that removing all carbonic acid would lower the temperature by about 21°, and adds that "This lowering of the temperature would diminish the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, and would cause a further almost equally strong fall of temperature." What process is he describing?

   AWater vapor would cancel out the cooling caused by losing carbonic acid BCarbonic acid and water vapor would disappear from the air together CA first cooling would reduce water vapor, which would cause more cooling DWater vapor alone, not carbonic acid, sets the temperature of the earth

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    At the end of paragraph 2 of Source 3, Arrhenius adds that less carbonic acid "would accentuate the temperature differences between the different portions of the earth, while an increase in this percentage would tend to equalize the temperature." What distinction does this sentence add?

    ABetween carbonic acid from volcanoes and carbonic acid from coal BBetween the temperature of the earth and the temperatures of the other planets CBetween the effects of water vapor and the effects of ozone DBetween a change in the average and a change in regional differences

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which statement best describes the geologists' evidence in paragraph 1 of Source 4?

    ASigns that past temperatures differed from today's, not evidence of their cause BMeasurements of carbonic acid trapped inside ancient rocks and fossils CTemperature records kept by observers during the glacial periods DProof that the spread of hazel-nuts and water-nuts changed the climate

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 2 of Source 4, Arrhenius says the question "has been answered in the affirmative by Högbom, and, in later times, by Stevenson." How strong is this support, as it appears in the passage?

    AConclusive, because two scientists who agree are enough to settle a question BWorthless, because scientists in 1908 did not know what carbonic acid was CLimited, because it names who agrees but gives none of their evidence here DIrrelevant, because Högbom and Stevenson studied coal rather than climate

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Footnote 3 of Source 4 gives the coal burned each year: 510 million tons in 1890 and 890 million tons in 1904. By about what percent did yearly coal burning grow over those 14 years?

    AAbout 43 percent BAbout 75 percent CAbout 175 percent DAbout 380 percent

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Source 4 says a year's coal adds "about one-seven-hundredth part" of the air's carbonic acid, and that the sea "takes up about five-sixths of the produced carbonic acid." By these figures, about what fraction of the air's carbonic acid would one year's coal leave in the air?

    AAbout 1/4,200 BAbout 1/840 CAbout 1/700 DAbout 1/117

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Explain how the census bulletin in paragraph 1 of Source 1 works in Turner's argument as a whole. What does the bulletin establish, what does Turner make it stand for, and how do the bulletin's own wording and paragraph 3 of Source 1 show a gap between the two? Quote at least twice.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Turner and Jackson describe the same westward movement. Quote one phrase from each source that describes it, and explain in three or four sentences where the two sources corroborate each other and where their judgments differ.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    In two or three sentences, reflect on reading Source 1 and Source 2 one after the other. What did reading Jackson make you notice in Turner that you might otherwise have missed? Quote one phrase from each source.

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18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    In four or five sentences, evaluate how strong Arrhenius's case is, in Sources 3 and 4, that changes in carbonic acid could explain the warm ages and ice ages. Name one kind of evidence he gives, one gap, and one kind of source that could corroborate or challenge him.

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19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Sentence [1] of Text B reads: "Arrhenius proved in 1908 that burning coal causes global warming." Name the problem and rewrite the sentence so that it says exactly what Sources 3 and 4 support, with a quotation and a citation.

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20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    In paragraph 2 of Source 4, Arrhenius concludes, "That would imply that there is no real stability in the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air." In two or three sentences, reflect on what it is like to read this 1908 sentence now, and how it affects the way you would use Arrhenius in a research paper.

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These standards connect to WHST.11-12.9: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.