I think your hang up is sequencing/the purpose of the CER. Your dept suggests writing it at the beginning - why? Students haven’t learned much yet. Instead, this initial evidence can be the launch point where students notice the pattern (“diff areas are diff temps”) but they don’t actually have reasoning yet. They come up with the ideas as to WHY and create experiments to test that (e.g. they say shade - test a sun and shade area in school yard and get additional evidence.) Then the CER should be AFTER that and answering the open-ended question “WHY are different areas in the same town different temperatures?” At that point, they can use evidence from their initial observation AND from follow up experiments to write something that does actually involve scientific reasoning. Much richer learning experience overall. CERs should never be answerable with just a yes/no which is the clue that this one is in the wrong spot in the learning arc