Or download our app "Guided Lessons by Education.com" on your device's app store.
EL Support Lesson
Creating Cause and Effect Skits
Students will be able to identify cause and effect.
Students will be able to write cause and effect sentences with transition words using sentence frames and skits.
- Walk into the classroom holding an umbrella and wearing a rain jacket.
- Pretend it was raining really hard outside by saying, "I'm so wet!"
- Ask the students to brainstorm some reasons why you would be wearing a rain jacket and carrying an umbrella. Allow a few students to share their ideas with the class, and record them in complete sentences on the whiteboard using the following sentence starter:
- I'm wearing a rain jacket because ____.
Building academic language
- Pass out the cause and effect Vocabulary Cards to each student. Read the student-friendly definitions on the cards and explain how the pictures connect to the words' meanings.
- Present the first set of prepared images out of order. For example, show a picture of a child swimming first. Next, show a picture of the ocean. See if students can figure out which picture is the cause and which picture is the effect.
- Ask students to hold up or point to the Vocabulary Card (cause or effect) they feel best represents the image you show.
- Continue this proces until you've shown the students all the images.
- Explain that examples of cause and effect are around us every day!
- Write the words cause and effect on the whiteboard. Draw a line to separate the words into columns. Under the word cause write the following phrase:
- Because it was raining,
- Use the Vocabulary Cards to reiterate to the students that the CauseIs when something happens that causes something else to happen as a result. Read the phrase and see if students can figure out the EffectOf the cause, what happened because it was raining.
- Encourage students to briefly close their eyes to visualize what you did in the beginning of the lesson. Prompt students using active questioning such as, "What was I wearing? What was I holding? What did I say?"
- Allow students to share their answers and encourage a student volunteer to come up to the board to finish the phrase in the column labeled effect. For example, the student may write:
- Because it was raining, Ms. Brown brought her umbrella and wore a rain jacket to class.
- Ask a student to read the finished sentence aloud.
- Split the students into six groups and pass out the cut out cause and effect strips from the Cause & Effect worksheet and highlighters.
- Write the following example from the worksheet on the board under the appropriate columns (cause and effect):
- Because Rachel studied, she got an A on her test.
- Explain to students that they will read the cause on the left of their sentence strip and highlight the effect on the right of their sentence strip. Encourage the students to work together as a group to decide on the answer. Remind the students to read the sentence aloud a few times after deciding on the correct effect to check for clarity.
- Allow a few students to share their answers with the rest of the group and collect the completed sentence strips.
- Keep the students in their small groups and write the following sentence starters on the board:
- Because ____, ____.
- If ____Then ____.
- Use one set of cause and effect images from the word level activity to act out the cause and effect that the images show. For example, use your hands to show wavy water. Next, pretend like you are swimming and having fun in the water, splashing about!
- Finish the sentence starters on the board to show the cause and effect from your skit. For example,
- Because I'm at the beach, I will swim.
- If I go to the beach then I will swim.
- Provide students with access to various props and costumes if possible.
- Challenge students to come up with a cause and effect skit together in their small group.
- When students are done creating their skits, call a few groups to the front of the classroom to perform their skits.
- Encourage students who are watching the skit to come up and write two different sentences that connect to the cause and effect from the skit, using the sentence starters for support. Help students edit their sentences to make them accurate.
Additional EL adaptations
- Encourage students to draw a picture of you in their reading log or journal during the introduction so they can refer to it during the sentence level activity.
- Allow students to write a sentence using only one of the sentence starters during the discourse level activity.
- If students are literate in their home language (L1), provide definitions of cause and effect in L1.
- Provide students with access to the cause/effect sentence strips and images to support them as they create their skits during the discourse activity.
- Encourage students to volunteer to come up to the board to write sentences during the discourse activity.
- Challenge students to come up with their own cause/effect sentence during the sentence level activity.
Formative Assessment of Academic Language(4 minutes)
- Have students go back to their seats and get out their reading logs or journals.
- Write the following sentence starters on the board and read through them aloud:
- Because I dropped my lunch, ____.
- If I go to the park then ____.
- Because it's hot outside, ____.
- Pass out a red and blue crayon to each student. Explain to students that they will write the sentence starters in their reading logs or journals and finish them using their own ideas and words. Next, they will underline the cause with red crayon and the effect with blue crayon.
- Rotate around the room and support students as needed.
- Collect reading logs and journals.
Review and closing(3 minutes)
- Provide students with the following discussion questions and have them do a think-pair-share with an elbow partner, sharing one of their answers:
- What is an example of cause and effect from your life?
- Why is it important to understand cause and effect?
- How can recognizing cause and effect in stories make you a better reader?