Writing a well crafted Claim-Evidence-Reasoning(CER) is a struggle for students at many grade-levels. Often teachers find that students can write a claim and provide evidence but they struggle connecting the reasoning to their claim.   In science, it is not uncommon for a middle schooler to write a conclusion to an experiment citing evidence that seems disconnected and could not possibly support or refute the hypothesis (claim) they investigated.  No wonder the reasoning is difficult.

Many science teachers, me included, have asked for help from our language arts colleagues, when it comes to teaching students how to write a cohesive CER.  In Language Arts a CER is written in a format that starts with the claim, followed by evidence from a source and reasons why the evidence supports the claim.  In science, we need evidence before making a claim and explaining the scientific reasons for a phenomenon. Kristin Hunter-Thomson, a former middle school teacher and data literacy expert with Dataspire, suggests a few strategies for helping students write a meaningful CER in science.  

Start with small steps:  Expose students to visual representations often. Before they analyze and interpret their own data they need a lot of practice with a variety of visual representations.  Start with the basics as students analyze and discuss the different types of visualization in groups.  Start with simple questions and about structure and then look for patterns. Gradually the questions and thinking gets more complex.

What kind of visual is used? ( pie, bar, scatter plot, histogram,etc)

What are the parts of the visualization?

What is the overall shape of the visualization?

What is the context of the visualization?

Are there outliers? What does the data show? How does each variable change?

What is the pattern in the data?

What can you infer and why?

Flip it: Start with the evidence before making a claim. Describe the evidence and reason it connects to an important science concept and then make a claim that ties it all together.

What can’t the evidence say: Kristin Hunter-Thomson advocates for teaching students to make inference about what the data can and cannot say.   She points out that students often over-conclude from their data and miss the data limitation.  By teaching students to think about what the data can and cannot say, they begin to see boundaries and make meaning.

Which one doesn’t belong: Kristin Hunter-Thomson gives students evidence of a visual representation and then gives students two claims.  Students must decide which claim the data represents and write a CER for it.  For deeper thinking, explain why the other claim is not supported by the visual representations.

Build it backwards: Valerie Overley at PBMS has her sixth graders start with the reasoning then identify the evidence before making a claim.  Students read and highlight an article while answering questions about renewable and non-renewable energy.  Then students analyze a graph looking at the evidence.  From the evidence and reasoning they write a claim.