Claim, Evidence, Reasoning: What You Need To Know - It's Lit Teaching

Are you students struggling to write coherent responses? Are their paragraphs too short? Their opinions vague? While the situation feels dire, there is good news! The CER writing strategy can help your students write more in-depth answers–and ease your grading woes!

CER Writing: An Introduction

You might find yourself here because you’ve been told you must use a claim, evidence, and reasoning (or CER) framework for writing in your classroom. Or maybe everyone is talking about the CER process, CER responses, or the CER strategy, and you’re feeling a little out of the loop. (We teachers do love to throw around those acronyms, don’t we?).

If you’re like me, your whole school may be committing to using a CER framework in all classes to build consistency and teacher equity for students.

Regardless, here you are wondering, what the heck is claim, evidence, and reasoning anyway? In this post, I aim to break CER writing down for you.

There are plenty of science examples out there, but I’m no science teacher. For this post, I’ll focus on my subject area, high school English language arts, but know that the CER framework can be applied to multiple content areas. It’s also used in many grade levels–from 6th grade to higher education.

If you’d like to teach the CER writing framework to your students, I have a whole bundle of resources right here.

CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) Writing Overview

CER writing is a framework that consists of three parts: Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning. This format is the perfect scaffold for argumentative or analytical writing and serves to break down arguments into manageable chunks for students.

You’ll often see CER in a science classroom as part of a scientific explanation or part of a science investigation. But it works well in any content area. In fact, my entire school uses it–even the gym classes!

A CER writing framework works especially well for teachers adhering to the Common Core State Standards. The words “claim”, “evidence”, and “reasoning” come directly from the standards themselves.

CER writing works especially well for academic writing. You wouldn’t, for instance, probably use claims, evidence, or reasoning in a creative writing class or with a narrative or poetry unit.

Want a FREE Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning Handout for your students? Sign up below and I’ll send you my top-rated CER handout!

CER–Too Formulaic?

While CER may seem formulaic at first, it does serve as a solid foundation for a natural flow of solid arguments.

Any attempt at persuasion must take a stance, support it with logic, and make a case.There are plenty of real-world scenarios in which CER is a logical format.

The formulaic nature of C-E-R writing makes it a helpful writing scaffold for students who struggle to organize their ideas or generate them in the first place. (This also makes claim, evidence, and reasoning a perfect skill to teach at the beginning of the year.)

As your students get better at the writing process, you can scaffold up your CER expectations with longer writing, requiring students to address counterclaims, and mandating richer research for empirical evidence.

Ok. Now let’s get into the CER framework!

Claim

The claim sets the tone for the rest of the writing.

It is the argument, the stance, or the main idea of the writing that is to follow. Some may say that in CER writing, the claim is the most important piece. After all, without a strong claim, there is no argument.

I have found that the placement and length of the claim will vary according to the length of the writing.

For a paragraph, I feel the claim makes a great topic sentence and thus, should be the first sentence. The body of the paragraph will then aim to support the topic sentence (or claim).

In a standard five-paragraph essay, the first introductory paragraph may build to the claim: the thesis. The body paragraphs will then each contain a sub-claim, so to speak, that supports the overarching claim or thesis.

Claims, while logical, should present an arguable stance on a topic.

(Emphasize to your students that evidence-based claims are essential.)

I often have to remind my students that if they are writing in response to research questions, restating the question in the form of a sentence and adding their answer is an easy way to write a claim.

A Claim Example for an English Class

Let’s use a Shakespearean example. A popular essay topic when reading Romeo and Juliet poses the following question: who is to blame for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet?

A claim that answers this question might read:

“Friar Laurence is most to blame for Romeo and Juliet’s deaths.”

This claim is strong for multiple reasons. First, it is direct. There’s no question about what the rest of the writing will be about or will be attempting to support. Second, this claim is arguable–not provable–but also logical. The idea can be supported by examples from the text.

A claim is not a fact. Evidence should support it, which we’ll discuss in a moment, but ultimately, it should not be something that can be proven.

Evidence

The next step in the CER writing framework is evidence.

Evidence is the logic, proof, or support that you have for your claim. I mentioned earlier that your claim, while arguable, should be rooted in logic. Evidence is where you present the logic you used to arrive at your claim.

A piece of evidence can come in a variety of forms: a fact, an observation, a data table, a primary source, or even quotes from interviews or authorities. Students might find evidence in video clips, a primary source, or by close reading an informational text.

For literary analysis, good evidence will generally be textual in nature.

That is, the evidence should be rooted–if not directly quoted from–in the text. For example, the writer may want to use quotes, paraphrasing, or a summary of events from the text.

I encourage my students to use word-for-word textual evidence quoted and cited from the text directly. This creates evidence with which it is difficult to argue.

You will also need to emphasize to your students the importance of relevant evidence. Quoting Charles Dickens in their research report won’t go very far in proving their point.

An Evidence Example for an English Class

If we continue with the Romeo and Juliet example, we could support our previous claim that Friar Laurence is most to blame for the couple’s death by presenting several pieces of evidence from the play.

Our evidence may then read as follows:

“In the play, Friar Laurence says to Juliet, ‘Take thou this vial, being then in bed/ And this distilled liquor drink thou off;/ …The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade/ … And in this borrow’d likeness of shrunk death/ Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,/And then awake as from a pleasant sleep’ (4.1.93-106).”

This is strong evidence because the text proves it. This quote comes directly from Shakespeare; you can’t argue with it. This is also very relevant evidence because it directly supports the claim using the very text about which we are arguing.

It is also on-topic. it shows a piece of the play that supports the idea that Friar Laurence is most to blame for Romeo and Juliet’s deaths.

For claim, evidence, and reasoning writing, the strength of the argument depends on its evidence.

Reasoning

Reasoning is the thinking behind the evidence that led to the claim. It should explain the evidence if necessary, and then connect it to the claim.

In a one-paragraph response, I usually recommend that students break down their reasoning into three sentences:

• First, explain or summarize the evidence that was just used
• Then, explain or show how this evidence supports the claim
• Finally, finish with a conclusion sentence

Personally, this is where my students struggle the most. They have a hard time understanding how to explain the evidence or connect it to their claim because it’s obvious to them.

If your students, like mine, struggle with crafting reasoning, I recommend giving them a sentence starter for their reasoning statement, like “This shows that…” or “This quote proves that….”

I also go over different ways to approach writing conclusion sentences, as my students often struggle with ending their writing.

(If you’d like help breaking this down for your students, my C-E-R Slideshow covers reasoning. It also covers three different ways to write a conclusion sentence.)

A Reasoning Example for An English Class

For our Romeo and Juliet example, it may read something like this:

“This quote shows that Friar Laurence is the originator of the plan for the two lovers to fake their deaths. Had he not posed this plan, Romeo could not have mistaken Juliet for dead. Thus, he would never have committed suicide, nor Juliet. As the adult in the situation, Friar Laurence should have acted less rashly and helped the couple find a more suitable solution to their problems.”

This reasoning is strong for several reasons.

First, note the transition in the beginning. It discusses the textual evidence–the quote presented–directly and explains what is happening in the quote.

Next, it walks the reader step-by-step through the writer’s rationale about the evidence that led her to believe the claim. Even if the reader does not agree with the reader’s claim, he or she must concede that the writer has a point.

You may have noticed that in this example, the reasoning tends to be longer than either the claim or the evidence. The length of the reasoning will vary according to the assignment. However, I have found that good reasoning does tend to be the bulk of CER writing.

Teaching Resources for CER Writing

Ready for your students to start using the CER framework today? Whether you’re teaching claim, evidence, and reasoning alongside the scientific method, during physical education, or in high school ELA, you’ll need to cover the basics and offer plenty of scaffolds!

The first step will be introducing the meaning of CER to students. Begin by giving them an overview of the framework and defining each section. This slideshow consists of 5 mini-lessons for doing just this: an overview, claim, evidence, reasoning, and a review.

It can be a lot for students to remember. And if you plan on doing regular writing, you might get a little sick of repeating yourself and going over the format again and again.

Avoid this from the beginning by giving each of your students a handout with all of the relevant information. Go ahead and grab my FREE Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning Student Handout right here.

The task cards in the above sections are a great way to practice each part of CER and demonstrate strong vs. weak examples of each. You can use those task cards as part of independent work or have students practice in small groups.

Lastly, don’t forget the scaffolds–especially during students’ first CER prompts. Graphic organizers can be especially helpful. I have a graphic organizer and outline that breaks down CER and includes writing tips right here.

Other Tips

CER works well for both middle school students and high school students. Use the above teaching resources to get your students started.

Make sure students can write a CER paragraph and identify the CER format in others’ writing.

Then, challenge them as they gain proficiency with more difficult writing tasks, longer assignments, and by requiring more rigorous research.

Don’t be afraid to give your students examples outside of your content area too. When students are first learning about claim, evidence, and reasoning, they’ll need as many examples as they can get.

Take those examples from science classrooms, social studies, and the real world. Remind students that CER isn’t just for scientific thinking; they can use CER for writing analysis essays, discussing graphic arts, or even to convince their parents to a change their curfew! Vary your CER lessons (or use this bundle to make it easy), an come up with crazy examples.

Teach the format first. Then you can focus on having students adapt CER writing to your content-specific assignments.

Get Started with Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning Today!

And there you have it! An overview of the CER writing framework. No doubt, you can see how this framework can easily be applied to a myriad of assignments in any content area.

Once you implement CER writing consistently in your classroom, you’ll start to see improvement in students’ critical thinking and writing skills.

If you need help getting started in using the CER writing framework in your English class, I have a few resources in my Teachers Pay Teachers store that can help you. Grab my complete CER Writing Bundle today!

Or you can start with a FREE student guide to claim, evidence, and reasoning!