Reading and writing · Grades 6–8 · 30–45 minutes · original text
Claim, evidence, reason
Students often paste a quote and stop. This pack makes the next sentence do the work: it explains why that detail supports the claim. Use the short passage, model paragraph and prompts below to practise the link between a claim and its evidence.
Purpose
Write one body paragraph that (1) states a claim about the passage, (2) uses one piece of text evidence, and (3) explains the link in the writer’s own words.
Reading: “The Tuesday Garden”
Every Tuesday after last period, six students unlock the side gate and walk to a strip of dirt behind the gym. They do not wait for a teacher to start. Maya checks the water barrel. Omar counts the tomato cages that blew over in the wind. When the soil is dry, they haul the watering cans before they sit down. By October the plants are uneven — some tall, some chewed — but the group still shows up, even on the week the cafeteria pizza is late and everyone is hungry.
© Plain Chalk. Teachers may print this page for a class they teach. Do not republish the passage as your own.
Steps
- Read the passage once for gist, once for details.
- Choose a claim from the menu or write your own (must be arguable, not a plot summary).
- Underline one sentence or phrase as evidence. Copy it with quotation marks.
- Write a reason sentence that starts with “This shows…” and does not repeat the quote.
Claim menu (pick one)
- The garden group treats the work as their responsibility, not a teacher’s job.
- The students keep going even when the work is imperfect or inconvenient.
Model (do not copy word for word)
Claim: The group treats the garden as their job.
Evidence: “They do not wait for a teacher to start.”
Reason: This shows they begin the tasks themselves instead of waiting for adult instructions.
Adaptations
- Emerging writers: provide the claim and the quote; they write only the reason sentence.
- Advanced: add a second piece of evidence and a counter: “A reader might say they only come for fun, but…”
- Multilingual: allow the reason sentence in the home language first, then English.
Possible evidence (not the only right quotes)
- “They do not wait for a teacher to start.”
- “When the soil is dry, they haul the watering cans before they sit down.”
- “the group still shows up, even on the week the cafeteria pizza is late”
A paragraph that only retells “they grow tomatoes” without a claim is not complete.