- Read a short story aloud to the class. Ask students to identify any cases of cause and effect presented in the story. Have students answer the following questions about the text: Does the passage tell you why something happened? Does this event cause something else to happen? Is the character in the story doing something because of something that happened previously? How are the events related? By anwering these questions, students will be able to identify cause and effect throughout the story.
- Place students into pairs. Have each pair of students develop a skit to demonstrate cause and effect. Skits need only be between three and five minutes long. For example, one student could pretend to eat a lot of food very quickly. The other student would pretend to have a stomach ache. Eating too much, too quickly would be the cause. Having a stomachache as a result of this would be the effect.
- Have each student write down five unrelated sentences. Each sentence will explain a cause. For example, consider the sentence, "Jane is afraid of dogs." This is a cause statement. Once each student has written all five sentences, instruct them to swap papers with another student. Have each student write in a second sentence. This will be the effect statement. Since Jane is afraid of dogs, the effect statement could be "Jane ran inside when she saw a dog in her yard." The reason she ran inside (the cause) was that she was afraid.
- Students will need the following items to complete this lesson: writing paper, white paper, pencil and markers or colored pencils. Have each student write a short story that includes three cause and effect scenerios. On white drawing paper have students illustrate the cause and effect scenerios described in the story. Use markers or colored pencils for illustration.
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