I have to present at our in-service next week on claim, evidence, and reasoning. I'm not worried about presenting to the upper grades but I'm not sure how to adapt it for k-2, especially K. I don't want it to be another one of those meetings that *doesn't apply to me*. Thoughts?
If yours is or was a Common Core state, you might try checking the state Common Core English/language arts content standards and supporting materials on the state DOE website: these should be in .doc or .pdf format, and that means that you can search for "claim", "evidence", "reasoning", or any combination of the three terms. You could also search the internet for ELA lesson plans for the grades in question: use a search string like "lesson plans language arts kindergarten claim evidence reasoning", and you could even add your state or "common core" if you wanted.
I would keep it simple for the younger grades (BUT YES KIDS CAN DO THIS AT THEIR AGE): o Claim- Make conclusions from investigations (answer the focus question) o Evidence- Use observations from investigations (have kids turn their data table or list into sentences). I use this as a prompt: "I don't believe what you are claiming - you need to prove it to me." I would suggest that you show teachers how to model this to their students. The teacher should write a claim and evidence with students a couple of times until they get the hang of it. Students should keep examples in their notebook or a teacher can create a poster with examples on it that students can refer to. One other tip that I have is that K-2 teachers can start off by giving students sentence starters and allowing students to finish the sentence. "Our focus question was: ____________________________________________________. After our experiment, I figured out that: ____________________________________________________ . I saw that: _____________________________________________________. I also measured ______________________________________________ and found out that: _________________________________________________________."