How to Improve Science Writing Using the Expanded CER Template

Ask any teacher who teaches elementary grades three through five or any middle school teacher who teaches their students to write about science, and they'll generally throw three letters at you -- CER.

CER stands for claim, evidence, and reasoning. It is a widely used writing structure taught to younger students, and even high school teachers and students use it when composing analytical paragraphs or short essays.

Proponents of CER will tell you that claim, evidence, and reasoning form the fundamental building blocks of any proficient piece of academic writing, and that until students understand how these components work and flow together in a paragraph, they will not be able to tackle more sophisticated types of writing.

At essaypop, we tend to agree with this premise, and most of the templates in our arsenal can in some way be distilled down into these three important components.

To understand what a proficiently written CER paragraph looks like, let's take a look at a simple paragraph written in a sixth-grade class where students were being asked to analyze the meaning of a poem.

As shown in this example, students first present a claim they wish to argue or prove. They then support their claim with relevant text evidence, followed by reasoning that explains how the evidence supports their claim. Once mastered, this straightforward template becomes a reliable tool for evidence-based, short-form writing.

CER is a straightforward framework, and as students practice thinking and writing this way, they develop the skills necessary for academic writing across subjects—including English, social studies, math, and science. Science teachers, in particular, have embraced CER because its logical and sequential structure aligns well with the requirements of scientific analysis and observational reports.

With this goal in mind, we adapted the template to address the specific writing demands of the science classroom. Consistent with our approach across all templates, we aimed to provide ample scaffolding and support throughout the process. We also ensured that students could collaborate and interact as they write, leveraging their natural tendency to be social. Ultimately, our intention was to bring the essaypop experience into the science classroom.

As shown in the image below, we start with a traditional CER template. In this example, the student is writing a basic research report on why chewing gum loses its flavor. Each writing frame is color-coded, reflecting research that indicates students learn and retain academic writing concepts more effectively when these components are associated with specific colors. For this reason, color coding has always been a core element of the essaypop methodology.

Notice also that we provide scaffolded, science-specific guidance and explanations for each writing component, placing them directly alongside the writing area so students can access support without leaving their workspace. Additionally, we include synonyms for claim, evidence, and reasoning within the writing frames, recognizing that students will encounter different terminology for these concepts across various curricula, textbooks, and standardized tests.

Essaypop also includes detailed models that show each paragraph element in the context of the full paragraph. These models and explanations are conveniently displayed next to the writing area for easy reference. Additionally, teachers can easily add their own explanations and models to the customizable sidebar.

This is what the frames look like once students have completed their writing. Keep in mind that as they write, they can access a formatting palette to create bold, italicized, underlined text, etc. Grammar and spell check software also easily integrates into the writing frames.

As students compose, they're writing is converted into an MLA-formatted document in real time, and this can be printed or exported to any document type.

The CER template, while perfect for learning the fundamentals and tackling shorter tasks, does have its limitations. When students face more demanding prompts, they'll need to expand the structure to accommodate more sophisticated thinking. They may, for example, want to add additional evidence or expand their reasoning based on new evidence and findings. They may wish to address a counterclaim or compose a reflection about their findings at the conclusion of a report.

With traditional CER templates, expansion like this would not be possible, but with flexible structures like those available in essaypop, such modification is done easily. Students add components to a paragraph by accessing the drop-down menu, where they can select the components they would like to add to the writing. It should be noted that students can also move and rearrange the writing frames at will by dragging and dropping them into new locations.

In the example below, you'll notice that the student has added a second piece of text evidence to support the claim. With this simple addition, the student is beginning to create more sophisticated support for her claim. Students we've interviewed have told us that having the ability to add components to their paragraph, one color-coded element at a time, makes them feel like they're in control of the elaboration and revision process.

In the next view, the student has added a reasoning section to support the evidence and has chosen to insert a paragraph break where a natural transition occurs in her writing. This process began with the basic CER structure; the student simply built on it step by step, gradually developing a more sophisticated piece of writing.

This is precisely what we hope to see from our students: learning foundational organizational structures, practicing them until they become second nature, and then expanding upon them incrementally. This sequential, step-by-step approach mirrors the way learning naturally occurs. In science writing, where logical and systematic organization is essential, this segmented and iterative method is especially effective.

Some EssayPop users who teach science have adapted our basic template to better fit their classroom needs. For example, this version was developed by a high school science teacher in Los Angeles. We refer to it as the modified CER, and we believe it’s an excellent variation—well-suited for high school students.

Adapting the CER template is an effective approach for guiding students through observational writing, process papers, and basic lab reports. In the example below, the claim is reframed as a hypothesis, the evidence sections are used to document the steps and observations from the lab experiment, and the reasoning becomes the conclusion or final analysis based on the completed lab.

As with all our templates, comprehensive support and scaffolding are built in. Beyond the helping text, explanations, and models previously mentioned, each writing frame lets students access academic sentence stems and phrases, giving them the confidence to start writing in any section. This feature is especially valuable for emerging writers, including English language learners and SPED students, but all students benefit from having access to an academic vocabulary bank. Our research indicates that when students regularly use these phrases, they begin to internalize the language and apply it in their writing outside of the essayop platform.

Pre-writing and brainstorming are often underused strategies in the classroom. Our Jamboard-style tool offers a simple way for students to brainstorm individually, or—ideally—for teachers to post guiding questions that students respond to and share before beginning the actual essay writing process.

As always, students using the essaypop platform can join their teacher in the collaborative, interactive Hive environment. Within this space, meaningful feedback and commentary are exchanged, collaboration flourishes, and engagement is sustained. Because students are naturally social, providing a dedicated environment to discuss their academic writing benefits both learners and educators.

Our proprietary assessment tool is valued by users nationwide because it enables teachers to filter rubrics and assess only specific, pre-selected sections of student writing. This targeted approach saves teachers time by focusing evaluation on designated areas and also generates actionable data in an intuitive dashboard, allowing teachers to quickly identify where students are making progress and where additional support is needed.

It’s important for emerging writers to recognize that claim, evidence, and reasoning are the foundational elements of academic writing, which explains why the CER template is so widely adopted by teachers at the elementary and middle school levels. It’s also understandable that science teachers, in particular, favor this approach. We consider CER to be a vital tool in our repertoire. However, when students are ready to move beyond this basic structure, we want them to have the flexibility to do so independently, without waiting for a teacher to introduce more advanced frameworks. Incrementally expanding the CER template allows students to develop greater sophistication and proficiency in their writing, and as you’ve seen, it’s an especially effective approach for science writing.