THIS is The Secret Ingredient for Better Writing Across All Subjects Ep. 13

In this episode, I’m diving into why CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) is the ultimate pivot skill. It’s not just for ELA. Students can use it in science, history, short responses, and full essays—and the more they practice it, the more confident and structured their writing becomes.

You’ll hear how I scaffold it with sentence frames, expand it with an “Explain in your own words” step, and enrich it with a hook and a powerful closing statement.  No matter your experience with CER, you’ll walk away with tools to make it more effective, more transferable, and way more engaging. 

 🎧 Let’s talk about how to teach CER… and why it might be the most important writing move you make all year. 

Need CER resources? Go HERE.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

You know how in the Lord of the Rings, they say they're like always on the hunt for this ring, right? And they're finding this one ring and they call it the one ring to rule them all. And it's like a big moment. And for some reason, that phrase always comes up when I think about this particular writing skill that we're going to talk about today. because it's a pivot skill, meaning that in a way it's the skill that rules them all because you can go in any direction with this one. And is it my favorite writing skill? No, that's probably not, but it's super needed. And once your students can get confident with this, then they will be able to go to any class that they have, go into science, go into history, wherever and use this skill and and get a great response written. Now I first want to talk about my own personal evolution of where I landed with this skill, which is CER claim evidence reasoning. And previously, I had started to use the race writing strategy, RACE, which is restate, insert, cite, and explain. And we were doing that for like a lot of our literature. And the problem was that my, my students are kind of literal sometimes, like if you want me to break this up into four different letters, okay, what goes with each letter in in race, the R and the A actually should be combined. Because you're just answering a question. You know, remember when we used to say answer in a complete sentence, that's really all that is. And so when we change answer into a complete sentence to, now you're gonna do R and A, but it's combined in this one cell and you need to write it into one sentence, they were just a little bit like, what, does that mean we're doing something different? I don't get it. And sometimes they would forget the letters and would have problems, like even on state tests and stuff, they would say, I didn't really remember the letters that I was, and I don't want them necessarily to just remember letters, acronyms in order to do, you know, great writing or feel confident in their writing when they're asked anything. So I try to keep it to a minimum. But CER is something that is a structure that will help them remember kind of what goes first in the middle and the end and then you can add stuff in to enhance their answers like once they get really good at this, you can do more with it. So I like to start with cer at the beginning of the year i usually wait until i have done you know one or two workshops we've gotten our writing samples we are we're well on our way with our warm-ups they're doing great with that and now we can start into this very important pivot skill what is a claim what is evidence and what is reasoning and i like to use these really high interest like short student passages about really fun topics, where it sort of like explains all about something they really love. Actually, I'm going to grab one for you. Let's read it, shall we? Yes, yes, yes. Okay, I have some passages for you. And I'm going to do a little reading for you. But I want to kind of walk you through how I would introduce this. So there's a short paragraph here. And the title of it is a question. Is caffeine harmful for kids? That's the question at the top. And then here's the paragraph that says, caffeine is a natural stimulant found in coffee, tea, energy drinks, and many sodas. While it can make people feel more alert, too much caffeine can lead to restlessness, headaches, and trouble sleeping. I agree with that. Some energy drinks contain as much caffeine as three cans of soda. Oh my gosh. Health experts warn that kids and teens may be more sensitive to its effects. That's true. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against caffeine for children under 12 and recommends limited intake for teenagers. Despite the warnings, many students regularly drink caffeinated beverages to stay awake or improve focus. There you go. Now at the bottom of this, it says, according to the passage, should kids avoid caffeine? drinking caffeine. Now the key here is, is it says according to the passage, it doesn't say according to your personal opinion, should students and then that's the difference. This is not an opinion writing that we're doing. This is evidence based writing. So it can only be what's in that passage and what that passage says. So then I walk them through like they have their own copy. And in their mind they're thinking about is this article saying yes kids should avoid it or no if it's yes go in there and find your evidence for it what is it saying what's the problem if kids drink caffeine highlight it so you first have them annotating their passage great now we move on and i give them Um, this first one we always do together and I give them the example sentence that would go with it. And then a little post-it note that explains what I did there. So I have C E R up and it says kids should avoid drinking caffeine because it can be harmful to their health. So this is a claim as I'm saying the answer and I'm backing it up now. In the post-it note there, it says restate the question in a complete sentence. So we're going back to old school here instead of restate an answer. I'm just saying you're going to include the question and you're just going to write a complete sentence because they have heard that forever since the beginning of time. They're like, oh, okay. Um, and then the next slide talks about. a little bit more advice about the C part. So you're going to stick with it because if they can get the C, the claim, perfect, they're set up for the rest to be even better. So it says here, don't start with yes or I think. They just say it boldly. Again, it's not an opinion paragraph. This is evidence-based. So they don't say, I think, yes, kids should avoid drinking. No, no, no, we're not doing that. You just take the yes, or I think, take it out. Sometimes they will naturally do that because they just, they get so excited. They're like, the question said, should kids be drinking caffeine? And I would write, no, they shouldn't because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's okay to just contain that excitement. Let them write it, what comes out naturally. and then give them some guidance on great. Now you've got something down. Now let's fix it. Let's shape it up so that it matches perfectly with how to write an actual claim. And then we move on to E the evidence. Now in this one, the evidence here is you're going to find a direct quote. So whatever it was that you just annotated, you're now going to quote it here. That's your first option. So you would say, according to the passage, or according to the text, comma, quotes. Too much caffeine can lead to restlessness, headaches, and trouble sleeping. The other option I put in there is that they could paraphrase it in their own words, but I want to talk about that a little bit later as far as like how to differentiate this. And then once they've used their quote, they move to the R section, which is reasoning. And I have a specific way that I teach this. It's a tough one for them. Reasoning is, you know, often something where they might say, because it's bad. And so how do we shape that up to be a really good, strong academic answer? And I give them the frame sense, dot, dot, dot, this shows, dot, dot, dot, and sometimes they can flip it around and do it the other way. This shows, and then sense. So let me tell you what I mean. For the R here, you could write, the evidence shows, that experts believe caffeine affects kids more strongly than adults. And then here's the kicker. Since, if they start the sentence with since, since it can cause headaches, sleep problems, and restlessness, kids should be careful and limit how much they drink to stay healthy. So you could do it the other way around too. Since it causes headaches, sleep problems, and restlessness, this shows that kids should be very careful and limit the amount of caffeine they do. So there's multiple ways that they could do this. They could do whatever they feel most comfortable with. And then from there, I show them a weak example that I often see, and I will tell them like, here's an answer that I've gotten in the past from a student. Show them the weak one and then show them the strong one. So a weak CER to this prompt would be, I think kids maybe shouldn't drink too much caffeine. The article says that caffeine can be bad. It's just not good for you and the doctors say so. So that is something that I've received a lot in the past where they're just, and then there's no punctuation and all that. So you're trying to shape them up into getting the basics of CER and then I have a slide where I share them. Why are we doing this? Why are we studying this? What's the big deal about it? And there's two reasons. One is that CER paragraphs are actually the body paragraphs of almost all your essays. So body paragraphs in argument, body paragraphs in informative and lit analysis, they're just little CERs running around in your essay. So if they can practice, like isolate this skill and have them practice it over and over again. And that's why I teach my essays in a 10 day block because we've done so much work on voice and hooks and sentence complexity that the introduction is much easier. And then we've done so much work on CER that I just say, okay, and then you're doing your body paragraphs, which are CER paragraphs. Oh yeah. Okay. You've done that before, right? most of writing is just me reminding them that they've done this in the past. Because so much of this has to do with their confidence. And when they start a new essay or something, they feel like, Oh, no, I don't know how to do this. This is something new, and I don't want to and then they just won't do it. So then I have enough of these for like a whole month, they could be bell ringers or something more maps. Um, but not my formal warmups because those are required and awesome and give you such a good return. Now, once your students get that down, you're going to want to try to stretch them into an even deeper response. So the best way to do this is to change your C E R and just add an E in there and make it C E E R. And in that one, you have the claim as usual, but your first E is to explain it in your own words. That's what I was saying back on that posted about paraphrasing. You could teach them a little paraphrasing lesson. And so if, if you're claiming that caffeine is not good, then you're going to just use your own words. And this is where it comes back to like using that skill of voice. You're not going to use I because this is a more formal response, but you could make a strong statement like caffeine will only cause you harm. I don't know, making that up. But you're basically saying caffeine will not get students the outcome that they want. They will not get you good grades. They will not get you into college, whatever. So they're going to say why Um, students should not, kids should not have caffeine in their own words. Then say, according to the text, it says, because sometimes they, they say stuff and then they just go straight to the quote and they quote like half a page. Cause they're like, Ooh, look at all this work I did. I copy and paste it. But you want them to eventually start to show you that they understand what they copied and pasted. Cause sometimes the copy paste is not related to what they just said. So you can hook it back and say, but does this quote. match with your explanation that you put in your own words now i also then have a resource where those who are ready can then level up to the next level of cer and this is where i add in a little bit more two things number one we add a hook so like if you were gonna do a literary response to a character. The first sentence you write, instead of your claim, you could just say something, you're not going to use the book name, you're not going to use the character's name, you might just say something like real courage doesn't always look like a superhero moment in a movie. Like you're just taking out whatever it is that that you want to talk about with this character, right? So let's suppose you're going to talk about this character being courageous. Typically, you would start the C as, you know, so-and-so in blah, blah book showed much courage during blah, blah, blah. Super boring, but correct. So now this is what I'm talking about leveling it up. You're talking about courage. Write a bold statement. doesn't give away the book name, it doesn't give away the character, they don't know what book this is. It's just given like, oh, real courage. What is this about? This is interesting. Now we've practiced hooks in the past, right? So they've done these over and over. And now they have a chance to practice hooks over and over and over and over in their CR. And then if for some of them who can transfer this ability to add a hook into their essay body paragraphs, you will be stunned at how sophisticated their writing sounds. Not all of them can do this. And that's why we start with that base C E R. Get down that structure, get confident with it. You don't have much to memorize. You just need to remember sort of the order that things should be outlined in your response. So now we have a hook. And then we have our claim that does not start with, I think, then we have, perhaps you've added the E in there where they're going to explain that claim a little bit more in their own words, then a quote, then some reasoning. Um, and they're going to talk about what this quote shows us. Now they could add in one more sentence. So you'd be looking at like a six sentence paragraph. which is totally awesome. And it doesn't really matter how many, you know, how many sentences there are. And they could even use some of the cool sentence complexity stuff that they learn in skill number three, where you do short, medium and long. And they could start their hook with like, courage, period. It doesn't always look like a superhero moment, period. Whoa, how cool would that be? So now they're using their skills in like a symphony again. And they're starting to see how the whole program is interconnected. Everything is important. Absolutely everything we do ties into something else. So we're into the last sentence, right? And you're going to have them do what I call stick the landing. And we'll talk about this more once we start getting into some of the essay writing. But this is the change that really sticks with their, like this is the one thing that will make their writing like beyond. And I discovered this, I don't know when it was, I don't like exactly remember when or where or how, but you have a hook and you're using certain phrases or words, right? So in this hook, We're talking about courage. We're talking about superheroes. And so in your landing, you now want to use that phrase or word again so that you have now tied the two together and it wraps it up like a bow. Like the whole thing becomes this package. And when I show my students how to do that, like the first time I showed them an argument essay where the, And this was by the one that's in my product was by a student who's an eighth grader who wrote that one about the alarm clock thing. And when they see that the word alarm clock was repeated in the last line, referring, it's like a Oh, what's that a callback. So we do we talk about when we're fiction writing, it's a callback. And when they see that they literally they'll go, Oh, oh, I see. And then like, that's cool. Cause they see how the whole thing is connected. And like, you are in charge of this paragraph. You are confidently, you know, spinning a wheel of knowledge that you know exactly where it's going. I don't really know where this sentence is going that I'm saying right now, but let me get back to what I want to talk about. All right. You're gonna stick the landing. And so maybe I have a, an example, like so if you're doing the outsiders, your stick, the landing would be most people would panic in that moment, but pony boy stepped up. And then you could connect it to your hook by saying something like that's the kind of bravery and courage that makes a true hero. So you're kind of repeating that hero frame, the word courage, it's all kind of coming back. So now it's not so formulaic. Now let's talk about the pivot. This is a structure that you should use in every single subject that you teach. And hopefully if you have someone else who's teaching other subjects, you can get together and have a talk about this. How can we both teach claim evidence reasoning in a way that they're like, oh yeah, I just, my English teacher totally broke that down for me. And imagine if the history teacher down the hall got your student, And the question was, why did the colonists rebel, you know, and that and that student wrote a paragraph where they had a hook. And then they wrote a claim out about why the colonists were justified in rebelling and, and then they explained why they just said that. And then they use a quote from that text. And then they use some reasoning that says since Blank, blank, blank. This shows blank, blank, blank. And then they wrap it up with some kind of stick the landing moment that connected back to their hook. Your history teacher would faint. How happy would they be if your students were doing that? You could. So I would suggest start meeting. Start going over these materials and talking about how can we do the level of CER where everybody can get it And then how are we going to stretch them so that their responses in all classes become richer and deeper? You can use CER in fiction and literature because if you're answering a question, you're making a claim, right? And your response to literature should not be informal. It should be rather formal. So it shouldn't be, I think pony boy is courageous. No, you're not going to start with I think again, take that out. So this teaches them a whole framework that they can use in every single subject. It provides a way to stretch them and you'll be surprised when you offer them the stretches of who will take you up on that offer. You'll have to decide later if you want to make it required or not. But I for a while there, I provided them two choices when we did an answer. And I had to like graphic organizers up there. I'm like, you can choose framework a that has CER or you can choose to level up. That's what I call it. You can level up and you could add in a hook and your reflection or whatever you want to do there. You could, you could like, level up one part at a time, like your first level up could be the E, the extra E, then the next time, I don't know, talk to them. Whenever I have a question about what to do in class, I always just say, well, I don't know, ask them. They love helping you make decisions. So should the next stretch be now add in a hook and the reflection? I think you should because it, you know, And then decide if there's more points or whatever. I don't know. There's different ways to do this. But you will be surprised at those who will pick that stretch one and they can do it. And you probably thought they couldn't. I've had several students where I was like, whoa, you were listening? Oh my gosh. Super exciting. Now when teachers go through my program training, Sometimes they'll ask like I focus a lot in the training on how to do your workshop skills and how to do your essay blocks. And then as they're planning, they're like, what do I do on the days when we're not doing workshop and we're not doing essays? And and this is it. This is my answer CER. So you should be filling in with CER at every turn that you can this way that way. do easy ones, do hard ones, do it in literature, do it with articles. Um, you could use quill.org to also support your writing. And they now have AI built in. I love quill. Please check that out if you haven't, because they are, they have like CER type writing in there that you could do. They've also built in some of the prompts from the writing revolution. So, they do the because but so sentences if you haven't seen that look that up. So quill will be able to address that part of it as well. So you the cool thing is they take a diagnostic there and then it it you know, the kids move at their own level and at their own pace through quill sometimes I'll just say you need to do 20 minutes of quilt today or this week or whatever and then they get their points for that. But CER is is more than just a one-time here or there thing this is the skill to rule them all this is your gandalf moment you all does gandalf say that i should really look this up because some of you are probably super buffs and i'm saying this all wrong my only memory is like when i was a kid i did start reading the hobbit but i honestly I only like page one. Sorry, I just laughed in your ear. There's like this whole description at the beginning about there's a hole in the ground. And I loved it. I was like, ooh. And then as soon as they started going on their adventure and their wars and stuff, I was like, ugh. I hate this. I just wanted to hear about the hole in the ground and the little guys. Anyway, I'm not a buff on it. So feel free to correct me. Okay, the point is, CER is your pivot skill. This is where you can use the skills from your workshop, you will be using voice and hooks and sentence complexity, all as as part of your CER response. And then it will help them, you know, work in other classes. And they'll be able to start to do this naturally where there's, there's no like, Okay, everyone, write your Z. They'll just start doing it. And then the moment that you, I would say, once you're comfortable with this, ask them the question, whatever the prompt is. According to the text, should kids drink caffeine? And then don't say anything. Don't say, remember to do CER. Just tell them you're going to respond to this prompt. And you want the goal is by the end of the year for them to just naturally start responding this way and responding this way in every subject. And I hope this episode today helped you with, you know, thinking about CER and how you could work this in with your class. I'll have some links to the resources that I use. You can check those out below and then share this. If there's somebody else you think might, you know, the history teacher down the hall. Show them the podcast. I love it. All right. Thanks for listening. And I will see you in the next episode. Be sure to follow Beyond the Paragraph wherever you get your podcasts and share this with a teacher bestie. They will love you for it. And so will I. To go deeper and learn more about the structured writing method, go to structuredwritingteacher.com.