The situation: you are covering a science class on short notice, or you need something that works on a bad Wednesday when the lab is locked and the projector is being argued with. This is ten original nonfiction readings for grades 8-12, each with its own question page and a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning prompt, plus a full answer key.

What is inside

• 10 readings of 410-500 words (27 pages total), each on a real scientific argument: the canary that was the first gas alarm, who gets included in a drug trial, the CRISPR announcement that could not be verified, the fish that emptied Lake Victoria, urban heat islands, why a cure in mice is not a cure, the antibiotic a computer found, the soil microbes that will not grow in a dish, false positives in screening, and what happens to vaccines in a broken cold chain.

• One question page per reading: 4 vocabulary words, 4 short questions, 1 CER prompt.

• Answer key for all ten, naming the paragraph each short answer comes from and saying what earns credit on the open ones.

• A teacher line per reading telling you which fact to confirm before you teach it.

Why teachers pick this up

• No prep, no lab, no video, no student login, no prior unit required - it works for a substitute who knows nothing about the class.

• The same reading serves Biology, Environmental Science, Chemistry, Physics, or a science-and-society elective, because the skill being practised is reading the evidence.

• Black and white printing is fine; colour is only an accent.

• Editable Word files included, so you can shorten a passage for a reluctant reader or swap a question for your own class without redrawing a slide.

• A 60-slide deck is included for projecting the same passages at the front of the room.

Standards it supports

NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 8 (obtaining, evaluating and communicating information) and Practice 7 (arguing from evidence); CCSS literacy-in-science standards RST.9-10.1 to RST.9-10.4 and WHST.9-10.1 for claims supported by evidence. CER writing frameworks used in US classrooms.

Formats you receive

• PDF in US Letter and in A4 (27 pages)

• Editable Word in Letter and A4

• PowerPoint deck, 60 slides

• Answer key as its own PDF, plus a README

Licence

Purchasing this resource grants one teacher the right to reproduce it for their own students. It may not be resold, shared with colleagues as a file, uploaded to a public drive or group, or used to train a machine-learning model. Quotations up to 50 words with credit are fine.

Not what you wanted? If a topic is missing for your course - ocean acidification, the fluoride evidence base, radiometric dating - message the store and say so. The next pack in this series is chosen from those requests.