Lateral Reading-Model-Evidence Link Diagrams (LR-MEL) Project
The purpose of our project is to promote students' civic and scientific evaluations of sources and alternative claims when confronted with controversial and/or complex socioscientific issues in the Earth and environmental sciences. We do this by integrating English Language Arts (ELA) and social studies classrooms—focused on source evaluation—with science classrooms—focused on evaluating connections between lines of evidence and alternative explanatory claims. We are developing, implementing, and testing complementary Lateral Reading (LR) and Model-Evidence Link (MEL) scaffolds that include instructional materials and methods in both social studies and science classrooms. Issues students explore range from climate change and extreme weather to freshwater availability and food security along with many others.
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Climate Change: Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution
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Provenance: Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record
Reuse: This item is in the public domain and maybe reused freely without restriction.
Fracking
Provenance: EPA
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Wetlands
Provenance: Eric Vance, EPA
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Moon Formation
Provenance: NASA
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Extreme Weather
Provenance: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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Fossils
Provenance: Ohio Department of Natural Resources
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Freshwater
Provenance: National Estuarine Research Reserve System
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Origins of the Universe
Provenance: NASA, ESA, and M. Montes (University of New South Wales)
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Project Overview
The Lateral Reading-Model-Evidence Link Diagrams (LR-MEL) project is investigating how deeper evaluations might promote changes in students' epistemic judgments, including source trustworthiness, and claim plausibility, toward a more civically-minded and scientific stance. We are also developing and implementing three-day summer institutes and follow-on professional development to help middle and high school ELA, social studies, and science teacher teams use LR (in ELA and social studies) and MEL (in science) scaffolds to facilitate students' critical-analytic thinking, evidence-based reasoning, and core disciplinary knowledge.
Lateral Reading - Source Evaluation
Extreme Weather Lateral Reading Source 1
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Provenance: Science Learning Research Group, UMD
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Extreme Weather Lateral Reading Source 2
Provenance: Science Learning Research Group, UMD
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Model-Evidence Link - Evaluating Connections Between Lines of Evidence and Alternative Explanatory Claims
Extreme Weather Introduction
Provenance: Science Learning Research Group, UMD
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Extreme Weather pcMEL diagram
Provenance: Science Learning Research Group, UMD
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Project Support
The Lateral Reading-Model-Evidence Link Diagrams project is supported in part by the NSF under Grant Nos. DRL-2201012, DRL-2346657, DRL-2201015, DRL-2201016, DRL-2201017, and DRL-2201018. Previous support came from Grant Nos. DRL-2201013, DRL-2027376, DRL-1721041, and DRL-1316057. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the NSF's views.
