Support a Claim With Cited Evidence

Hey there! I'm Quill, and today we're going to make your arguments impossible to ignore. A persuasive paragraph has three moving parts that work together like a three-legged stool — remove one leg and the whole thing falls. **Claim** — your position, the thing you are arguing is true. Example: "Schools should have longer recess periods." **Evidence** — a specific fact, statistic, or detail drawn directly from a source. You introduce it with a signal phrase that names the source so readers can trace it. Example: "According to the American Academy of Pediatrics' 2018 policy statement on play, children who had regular unstructured outdoor play showed meaningful improvements in classroom attention." **Reasoning** — the sentence YOU write that explains the logical link between that evidence and your claim. Evidence never speaks for itself! Example: "This shows that more recess time directly supports the focus students need to succeed academically, making extended breaks a smart school policy." A common mistake writers make is dropping in a quote and assuming the reader sees the connection. They usually don't! Your reasoning sentence is where your thinking lives — it is the most important sentence you write. Also watch out for evidence that sounds impressive but doesn't actually connect to your claim. If your claim is about school recess and your evidence is about adult workplace productivity, that evidence is off-topic, no matter how convincing it sounds on its own. Try the pattern: **Claim → Signal phrase + Evidence → Reasoning**. Once you own this pattern, you can defend any position with precision.