CER Writing Lesson Plan Template for Science

Claim-Evidence-Reasoning is a framework for scientific argumentation. The claim answers the question, the evidence comes from data or observations, and the reasoning explains why the evidence supports the claim using scientific principles.

Students struggle with CER because they skip the reasoning. They state a claim and cite evidence but don't connect them. The lesson plan needs to explicitly teach and scaffold the reasoning component.

Model (10 min): Show a complete CER example. Think aloud through each component. Then show a weak example and have students identify what's missing.

Guided practice (15 min): Give students data and a question. They write a claim together, select evidence as a class, then write reasoning in pairs. Provide sentence frames: 'This evidence supports my claim because...'

Independent practice (15 min): Students write their own CER from new data. Circulate and check reasoning sections specifically — that's where the thinking lives.

Science lessons generated by LessonCraft can include CER writing as an assessment component, with scaffolded instructions and sentence frames embedded in the plan.