1. Write a CCC explaining your answer.
Bellringer—Tuesday
Use the poem on the back of your bell work sheet to answer the question below:
How is the speaker different from the others she writes about?
She feels isolated from other people.
She values life in the city more than nature.
She thinks winter storms are more beautiful than clear summer days.
She is frustrated with people’s trivial concerns.
Write a CCC explaining your answer.

2. “Henrietta’s Dance”
Day 2

3. Objective
I can determine how an author develops claims to advance a purpose.

4. How do we find the claims?
In this text, Skloot emphasizes a number of main ideas.
What were some of the main ideas you all identified throughout the text?

5. Claims…Paragraph by Paragraph
Paragraph 1: “Not long before her death, Henrietta Lacks danced”
P2: “her womb would give rise to a new age in medicine”.
P3: “the tumor was malignant”
P4: “The day George Gey got his hands on Henrietta Lacks's cells, everything changed”
P5: “Gey introduced the nation to his hopes for curing cancer while Henrietta's body lay in the Hopkins morgue”
P6: “They don't know that soon after Henrietta's death in 1951, Gey and his colleagues used her cells to grow the polio virus that was ravaging children throughout the world.”
P7: “She made it possible to grow the virus so the vaccine could be developed."
P8: “Her cells sat in nuclear test sites from America to Japan and multiplied in a space shuttle far above the Earth. Still, David Lacks and his children hadn't a clue.”
P9: “The [only thing] I heard about it was, she had that cancer," David Lacks says.”
P10: “He didn't hear, that is, until a hazy day in 1975”
P11: “Barbara Lacks, the wife of Henrietta's eldest son, Lawrence, sat down for dinner at her friend Jasmine's house”

6. Claims…Paragraph by Paragraph
P12: “Are you related?"
P13: “She's been dead almost 25 years, what do you mean you're working with her cells?"
P14: “I wonder why they never mentioned anything to the family.”
P15: “Henrietta's cells were, and still are, some of the strongest cells known to science”
P16: “culturing cells became suspiciously easy.”
P17: “HeLa cells, he claimed, had infiltrated the world's stock of cell cultures.”
P18: “There was no way to know which cells were growing in the petri dish”
P19: “From these donations, researchers would find precious bits of information about Henrietta--like her blood type--that they could use in their attempts to study her cells.”
P20: “you could speculate, to a remarkable extent, as to what Henrietta Lacks's [genetic makeup]”
P21: “we just got tired of calling”

7. Claims…Paragraph by Paragraph
P22: “points to important ethical questions”
P23: "One is the question of consent, and the other is what, if anything, is morally or legally due to a person if something of commercial value is developed from their cells."
P24: “the issue of commercial value in this case is very unsettled”
P25: “we still haven't figured out how to handle it . . .”
P26: “Lacks family feel they've been passed over in the story of the HeLa cells”
P27: "HeLa will live forever, perhaps”

8. Look at the ideas you underlined in the article
Look at the ideas you underlined in the article. Ask yourself, “What do these ideas have in common?”
Your answers to this question are the claims that Skloot is making.
Remember that a claim is something the author is asserting is true.

9. There are three main claims in the article
There are three main claims in the article. Try to categorize all the main ideas into three big categories.
What is a short phrase that would capture that idea?
For example, “Henrietta Lacks’ cells were taken from her for important medical research.”
WRITE DOWN ONE CLAIM THAT YOU CAN IDENTIFY FROM THE TEXT.

10. Look at your Claim…
Find the support that Skloot offers for the claim that you identified.

11. Exit Ticket—Let’s put it all together
Which of the following best states the claim in “Henrietta’s Dance”?
Hela cells are the only types of cells that should be studied for medical research.
Hela cells changed the trajectory of medical advancements.
Hela cells should be destroyed before they contaminate other sources for research.
Hela cells should not be used because the donor did not give informed consent.
Henrietta Lacks will never die.
Which piece of evidence best supports the claim?
They were the standard reference cells—few molecular scientists hadn’t worked with them.
…soon after Henrietta’s death in 1951, Gey and his colleagues used her cells to grow the polio virus that was ravaging children throughout the world.
The truth was, Henrietta’s cells had traveled through the air, on hands, or the tips of pipettes, overpowering any cell cultures they encountered.
I wonder why they never mentioned anything to the family. They know how to contact us.
The cells[…]had been alive since Henrietta’s death and were all around the world.
3. Explain your answers.