Brought to you by NMLSTA and the NSTA Middle Level Teaching Committee

Join Us for Our Next Webinar Featuring Missy Holzer, Ph.D., LR-MEL Project Team Member and Lorraine Ramirez Villarin, Ph.D., University of North Georgia.

Promoting Argument Driven Explanation in Earth & Environmental Science

 

Monday, December 8, 2025

7:00 p.m. ET, 6:00 p.m. CT, 5:00 p.m. MT, 4:00 p.m. PT

The purpose of the Lateral Reading-Model-Evidence Link Diagrams (LR-MEL) 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.

Scaffolds have been designed for a variety of Earth, Space, and Environmental Science topics.

Participants receive access to all instructional materials.

 Presenters

 

               Missy Holzer                  Lorraine Ramirez Villarin

 Missy Holzer, Ph.D., Lead Master Teacher, LR-MEL Project

Missy is a science curriculum design consultant who specializes in the enactment of science standards. Previously, she taught high school Earth, space, and environmental science courses in New Jersey for over 30 years and currently teaches higher education courses. While teaching, her students investigated compelling local phenomena using archived, real-time and original data and data tools in their pursuit of understanding Earth System Science. She continues to serve in leadership positions with the National Earth Science Teachers Association since 2006, including a term as president (2012-2014), and most other terms as secretary of the organization. In addition, she has served on many state and national committees, presents at local, regional, and national conferences, and is the author of numerous articles in practitioner journals. She has been on the MEL team through each iteration of the project. She has a master's degree in science education, a master's degree in geography, and a PhD in science education.

Lorraine Ramirez Villarin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Middle Grades, Secondary, and Science Education, University of North Georgia

Lorraine is a passionate science teaching educator at the University of North Georgia. Her teaching career spans over 15 years in K-12 instruction in her beloved home in Puerto Rico and over 10 years in higher education. A doctorate in STEM Education led to the creation of several socioscientific issues from environmental scenarios impacting the island. Dr. Ramirez's research focused on the incorporation of "real-world" socioscientific issues in the high school curriculum to enable socioscientific reasoning and exercise decision-making skills through evidence-based justifications among Latinos. Her research was featured in the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) conference in 2018 and published in the American Biology Teacher journal. Her expertise led her to join the SLRG (Science Learning Research Group) in the LR-MEL Project since 2021. As part of the Georgia team, she recruits, trains, and supports middle grades and high school teachers using the LR-MEL resources. This work has been published in NSTA’s Science Scope, and the Theory into Practice Journal, among others.

For more information about LR-MEL please visit: https://serc.carleton.edu/mel/index.html

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TO SIGN UP FOR THIS WEBINAR CLICK HERE

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A certificate indicating you have engaged in one hour of professional development will be available to those who attend the webinar in person and request it.

The presentation will be recorded and placed on the NMLSTA website https://nmlsta.wildapricot.org/ where it will be available for members.

2025-2026 Webinar Schedule

Click on the "Members Only" tab above to watch the videos of previous Webinars

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September 25, 2025

Suzanne Cunningham: LEGO(TM) Chemistry

October 21, 2025

   Suzanne Zilvetti: Show What You Know: Empowering Students with Science Portfolios    

 November 18, 2025

   Emily Hawbaker: Teaching Energy & Creating Energy Team - Kids Teaching Kids!    

December 2, 2025

Missy Holzer & Donna Governor - Empowering Students to Think Critically with Model-Evidence Link Diagrams

 January 15, 2026

Katy Garvey - MySciLife
 February 25, 2026

    Jon Griffith & Bridget Walsh -  Explore Data Sensemaking Strategies in the Context of Climate Phenomena with Data Puzzles    

March 24, 2026

Rachel Arbor - Integrating Environmental Literacy into the Classroom

April 15-18, 2026

NSTA National Conference

Anaheim, CA

The presentations will be recorded and placed on the NMLSTA website where it will be available for members.

To access the recordings of previous webinars, click on the "Members-Only" link  in the header strip.