CER Science Graphic Organizer Template: Claim Evidence Reasoning

Description

“Support your answer” is easy to say and hard for students to do. Claim-Evidence-Reasoning writing fails most often at the structure, not the science — students have the ideas but can’t organize them into an argument. This graphic organizer gives them the structure: a student-friendly template that breaks scientific argumentation into manageable steps.

What’s inside

Per the current listing, the organizer walks students through the three moves of a scientific argument: develop a clear claim, select relevant evidence, and explain the reasoning that connects the two. It is a reusable template designed to pair with CER activities across topics. The exact format details (page layout, number of evidence rows, digital/print versions) are not specified in the current listing and should be confirmed before this section is expanded.

How it runs in class

Print it once and keep a class set, or hand it out with every CER task until the structure becomes automatic. It is the scaffold to reach for when a class is new to argumentation, when a writing task stalls, or when you want formative evidence of how a student is reasoning before they write the polished paragraph. Because it is topic-neutral, it pairs with every CER activity in the Beyond the Brains catalog — data analysis follow-ups, S.E.E.D. solution evaluations, and case study responses alike.

Details

Grades 6–12 · Biology, General Science, Writing. Reusable template.

Plan to fade it. The organizer is a scaffold, not a destination: early in the year it carries the full structure, and as the routine becomes automatic you can withdraw it and let students build the same three moves in open writing. The students who internalize claim, evidence, and reasoning as a habit — rather than as boxes to fill — are the ones whose later arguments hold up under questioning.

Put it to work with a ready-made task: try the Coral Bleaching CER writing activity or the El Niño data analysis task cards. And the Free Library has free resources to pair with it.