Exploring Cause and Effect

This week in reading we were exploring the relationship between cause and effect, and how understanding this relationship can improve our comprehension. At the beginning of the week, I showed my students our new anchor chart and went over how cause and effect are related. 

I absolutely love this anchor chart! It provides great visuals for my students. They loved the Angry Birds and felt bad for the poor little pig.

After I introduced the anchor chart, I read them the story If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff.  Any of the books in this series would be great for discussing cause and effect relationships. I selected this book due to the time of year and chilly weather. While I was reading, I had my students listen for the different causes and effects throughout the story. After I finished reading we discussed the different relationships they found. Once I felt they had a good understanding of the skill, I sent them back to their seats with a sticky note for their independent reading time. While they were reading, they had to find two cause and effect relationships and record them on their sticky note. I have some nonfiction lovers in my classroom, and they were concerned about finding cause and effect  relationships in their books. This led to a great discussion about cause and effect relationships in nonfiction. Once they were finished reading, I had the students come back to the front of the room, and we shared our results. I then posted their sticky notes on our anchor chart to provide more examples.

Later in the week, I had the students review what we had learned by playing a game of Cause and Effect, I Have, Who Has.

This game was a great review strategy and a bunch of fun. By the end of the week, we were cause and effect masters! I posted my Cause and Effect I have, Who Has game as a freebie to my TeachersPayTeachers store. Feel free to check it out, and use it in your classroom!