2025 Philadephia Institute:

Teaching Students to Evaluate Sources and Claims

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Screenshot from Google Street View of Philadelphia Performing Arts: A String Theory Charter School

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.

Day 1

Logistics

Introductions & Icebreaker

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• Activity 1: Icebreaker (Acrobat (PDF) 4.7MB Jun25 25)

Science in the News

How often do you see claims made in the news that seem to be backed by scientific evidence? How can you tell what is real and what is not? Analyze two sources to identify claims or models and the evidence that supports them.

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• Activity 2: Science in the News (Acrobat (PDF) 850kB Jun25 25)
• Activity 2A Handout: What Can We Learn From These Sources (Acrobat (PDF) 84kB Jun2 25)
• Source#1: Measles Truth or Consequences
• Source #2: Global measles cases almost double in a year, say researchers
• Hurricane Helene Was Engineered (Acrobat (PDF) 136kB Jun2 25)
• Activity 2B Handout: What can we learn from these sources? (Acrobat (PDF) 45kB Jun4 23)
• Source#1: What to Know About the Study Linking a Popular Artificial Sweetener to Cardiovascular Disease
• Source #2: Debunking The Erythritol Study

Break

Take a break and take a little time for yourself.

Disciplinary Venn Diagram

Consider how Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts practices overlap in each content area.

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• Activity 3: Disciplinary Venn Diagram (Acrobat (PDF) 714kB Jun25 25)
• Disciplinary Venn Diagram (Acrobat (PDF) 77kB Jun5 23)
• Harkness Discussion
• How to Run & Assess HARKNESS DISCUSSIONS
• Harkness Discussions in Three Simple Steps

Website Introduction

Slides and Handouts from the workshop and other resources

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• Activity 4: Project Website (Acrobat (PDF) 538kB Jun25 25)

Lunch

Lunch!

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LR Activity: Conserving Attention with Lateral Reading

While students are able to quickly access vast amounts of information today, they often need help deciding what deserves their attention.

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• Activity 5: Conserving Attention with Lateral Reading (Acrobat (PDF) 2.9MB Jun25 25)

LR Activity: Introduction to Credibility

What does it mean for a source to be credible? How do you decide whether to believe someone?

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• Activity 6: Intro to Credibility (Acrobat (PDF) 1.1MB Jun2 25)
• Intro to Credibility Guiding Questions (Acrobat (PDF) 143kB Jun2 25)

Break

Take a break and take a little time for yourself.

MEL Activity: Wetlands pcMEL

Use a pre-constructed MEL (pcMEL) diagram to investigate two explanations about how wetlands affect humans and the environment.

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• Activity 7: Wetlands pcMEL (Acrobat (PDF) 3.2MB Jun25 25)
• Wetlands pcMEL Teaching Resources

Connections between LR and MEL Activities

Revisit your Disciplinary Venn Diagram posters. What connections exist between an LR lesson and a MEL lesson? What further connections can we make?

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• Activity 8: Connections (Acrobat (PDF) 382kB Jun25 25)

Wrap Up

Feedback on two questions: 1) How do you feel after today? and 2) What questions do you have after today?

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• Activity 9: Wrap Up (Acrobat (PDF) 640kB Jun25 25)

Feedback on two questions: 1) How do you feel after today? and 2) What questions do you have after today?

• 1) How do you feel after today?
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  PA Day 1 Q1 Word Cloud

  Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
  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.

• 2) What questions do you have after today?
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  PA Day 1 Q2a

  Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
  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.
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  PA Day 1 Q2b

  Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
  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.
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  PA Day 1 Q2c

  Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
  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.

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Day2 PA Institute

Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
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.

Day 2

LR Activity: Introducing Lateral Reading

What does it mean for a source to be credible? Why should we investigate whether a source is credible before we read it?

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• Activity 10: Introducing Lateral Reading (Acrobat (PDF) 979kB Jun20 25)
• Lateral Reading Guiding Questions (Acrobat (PDF) 83kB Jun20 25)

Break

Take a break and take a little time for yourself.

MEL Activity: Soil and Food Security baMEL

Build a MEL (baMEL) diagram to investigate the role of soil in providing food for the world's growing global population. Choose from three models and eight lines of evidence.

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• Activity 11: Soil and Food Security baMEL (Acrobat (PDF) 6.2MB Jun26 25)
• Soil and Food Security baMEL Teaching Resources

MEL Activity: Compare and Contrast pcMELs and baMELs

What are the instructional differences for students and teachers between pcMELs and baMELs?

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• Activity 12a: Compare Contrast pcMELs and baMELs (Acrobat (PDF) 549kB Jun26 25)

LR Activity: Modeling Lateral Reading

• Modeling Lateral Reading (Acrobat (PDF) 391kB Jan26 26)

Lunch

Lunch!

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Talk Moves

In order to process, make sense of, and learn from their ideas, observations, and experiences, students must talk about them. What does academically productive talk look like?

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• Talk Moves (Acrobat (PDF) 1.1MB Jan26 26)
• Talk Moves Infographic (Acrobat (PDF) 603kB Jun26 19)
• Talk Moves Checklist (Acrobat (PDF) 139kB Jun26 19)
• Talk Science Primer (Acrobat (PDF) 880kB Jun26 19)
• Ready, Set, SCIENCE
• How (Well-Structured) Talk Builds the Mind An extra article not included in the Institute, but that you might find interesting.
• Discussion Moves Transcripts (Acrobat (PDF) 61kB Jun12 23)

MEL Activity: Introducing the Energy baMEL

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• Energy baMEL Intro PA (Acrobat (PDF) 1.5MB Jan26 26)

Break

Take a break and take a little time for yourself.

MEL Activity: Assessing Student Work

• Assessing Student Work (Acrobat (PDF) 2.5MB Jan26 26)

LR Activity: Discussions about Lateral Reading

• Discussions about Lateral Reading (Acrobat (PDF) 503kB Jan26 26)

Wrap Up

Feedback on two questions: 1) How do you feel after today? and 2) What questions do you have after today?

• 1) How do you feel after today?
• 

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  PA Day 1 Q1 Word Cloud

  Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
  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.
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  Day 3 Qi PA

  Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
  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.

• 2) What questions do you have after today?
• 

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  Day 3 Q2a PA

  Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
  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.
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  Day 3 Q2b PA

  Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
  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.

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Day 3 PA

Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
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.

Day 3

MEL Research Talk

How do students negotiate evaluations of the relations between lines of scientific evidence and alternative explanatory models of a phenomenon during an argument-based learning activity? How do students plausibility judgements change pre- and post- MEL activities? Does this make a difference between pcMELs and baMELs? What does the research show?

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• MEL Research Talk PA (Acrobat (PDF) 4MB Jan28 26)
• Some of our recent research publications
• The curious construct of active learning
• Negotiations in scientific argumentation: An interpersonal analysis
• Students’ Scientific Evaluations of Water Resources (Acrobat (PDF) 2.7MB Jun12 23)
• Climate crisis learning through scaffolded instructional tools
• Scientific evaluations and plausibility judgements in middle school students' learning about geoscience topics

LR Activity: Addressing Unhelpful Strategies

What do you think/know your students have learned from other classes or past teachers about evaluating online information? How can you help counter unhelpful strategies?

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• Unhelpful LR Evaluation Strategies (Acrobat (PDF) 2.8MB Jan28 26)
• Weak Heuristics Transcripts (Acrobat (PDF) 45kB Jun13 23)

Break

Take a break and take a little time for yourself.

MEL Activity: Discourse Strategies

Negotiation is a subset of argumentation, where students present a position and agree or disagree with each other by offering explanations and counter arguments. How can we help students engage in constructive discourse during argumentation? What strategies help scaffold student discourse so that negotiation leads to consensus?

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• Negotiating Argumentation Discourse (Acrobat (PDF) 3MB Jan28 26)
• Argumentation Negotiation Table (Acrobat (PDF) 154kB Jan28 26)
• Argumentation Negotiation Flowchart (Acrobat (PDF) 203kB Jan28 26)
• Argumentation Negotiation Examples (Acrobat (PDF) 75kB Jan28 26)
• Freshwater baMEL Evidence Texts (Acrobat (PDF) 4MB Jan28 26)

LR Activity: After Lateral Reading

Explore additional resources, ways to assess lateral reading, and strategies, such as click restraint, that might help students abandon sources that aren't credible enough for their information goals. How do we respond to students' experiences, knowledge, and beliefs?

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• After Lateral Reading (Acrobat (PDF) 1.1MB Jan28 26)
• Civic Online Reasoning Resources from the Stanford History Education Group - Includes curriculum, videos, and research.

Lunch

Lunch!

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LR Skills in Science Classrooms

How does LR integrate with MELs? What resources do we provide? How do you use LR beyond the MELs?

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• LR Skills in Science Classrooms (Acrobat (PDF) 926kB Jan28 26)

MEL Skills in ELA/SS Classrooms

What constitutes evidence in your subject (ELA and/or social studies)? How does your subject evaluate the quality of claims? How does your subject compare the truthfulness of alternative claims/explanations?

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• MEL Skills in ELA/SS Classrooms (Acrobat (PDF) 679kB Jan28 26)

The LR and MEL Teacher Guides

How can you use MEL and LR activities in the classroom? The Teacher Guides provide directions and tips.

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• The LR and MEL Teacher Guides (Acrobat (PDF) 1.6MB Jan28 26)

LR-MEL Website & Other Resources

The LR-MEL Website contains teaching materials and professional development resources. Take a quick tour of what's there.

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• Website Resources (Acrobat (PDF) 578kB Jan28 26)
• The LR-MEL project website
• With this grant we have added lateral reading activities along with pcMEL and baMEL activities to the website.
• Materials from this workshop and more are posted here.

Implementation Planning

If you're here in a team, what will implementing LR and MEL in your classrooms look like? What kinds of coordination will you need to do? If you're flying solo, what components (LR or MEL) can you use? Are there ways to bring in the principles of the other into your classroom? Are there teammates at your school that you could teach with about LR and MEL?

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• Implementation Planning (Acrobat (PDF) 350kB Jan28 26)
• UMD Science Learning Research Group
• Project Website

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Day4 PA

Provenance: Carla McAuliffe, IGES
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.

Day 4

Science in the News part 2

How do students apply claims-based reasoning beyond the classroom? How do we support students' evidence-based reasoning with new science concepts & articles? Analyze two sources to identify claims or models and the evidence that supports them.

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• Activity 25: Science in the News part 2 (Acrobat (PDF) 765kB Jun28 25)
• Poorest areas bear brunt of air pollution, US study shows | Air pollution | The Guardian (Acrobat (PDF) 2.6MB Jun28 25)
• When air quality declines, low-income people and communities of color suffer the most - MarketWatch (Acrobat (PDF) 2.1MB Jun28 25)
• Seeking Models and Evidence in Research Articles (Acrobat (PDF) 75kB Jun28 25)
• Seeking Models and Evidence in Research Articles: Teacher Guide (Acrobat (PDF) 144kB Jun28 25)

Making LR and MEL Connections

How might LR and MEL activities go together? What could this look like in the classroom?

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• Making LR and MEL Connections (Acrobat (PDF) 447kB Jan28 26)
• LR Sources Mapped to MEL Topics (Acrobat (PDF) 80kB Jun28 24)

Implementation Planning Continued

If you're here in a team, what will implementing LR and MEL in your classrooms look like? What kinds of coordination will you need to do? If you're flying solo, what components (LR or MEL) can you use? Are there ways to bring in the principles of the other into your classroom? Are there teammates at your school that you could teach with about LR and MEL?

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• Implementation Planning (Acrobat (PDF) 350kB Jan28 26)
• UMD Science Learning Research Group
• Project Website

Wrap Up

Complete the Post Institute Evaluation to provide us with feedback.

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• Wrap Up (Acrobat (PDF) 537kB Jan28 26)

Interested in Research?

Implement MEL and LR activities. Allow us to observe your classroom after collecting consent and assent forms. Collect student data and return to the research team. Find out more below and email us with a plan if you are interested.

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• Research Interest (Acrobat (PDF) 192kB Jan28 26)