5th Grade · Reading · RI.5.3

Cause and Effect Lesson Plan for 5th Grade

A ready-to-teach cause and effect lesson for 5th Grade, built around finding causes and effects in informational texts and tracing a chain of events in which each effect causes the next. Print the plan, print the practice pages, and you are set.

Approximately 47 minutes

Learning objective

Identify cause-and-effect relationships in a text about color and light
Use science context to distinguish causes from resulting effects
Apply signal words to analyze scientific cause-and-effect chains

Materials

Cause and Effect in a Text About Inventing the Refrigerator
Cause and Effect in a Text About Why the Aral Sea Shrank
Cause and Effect in a Text About Sea Otters and Kelp Forests
Cause and Effect in a Text About the Erie Canal
Cause and Effect in a Text About How Volcanoes Build Islands
Cause and Effect in a Text About Ocean Tides
Pencils, and whiteboard space for the modeled examples

Lesson steps

1. Build the background (5 min)
Connect cause and effect to a book the class already finished. Prior knowledge is doing most of the work in comprehension, so spend the time here.
2. Read aloud and think aloud (I do) (10 min)
Read a short passage aloud and stop twice to narrate your own thinking about cause and effect. Students are learning the move, not the answer.
3. Guided practice (we do) (12 min)
Read a second passage together. This time students find the evidence and you record it. Push every answer back to the text with "what words told you that?"
4. Independent practice (you do) (15 min)
Hand out "Cause and Effect in a Text About Inventing the Refrigerator". Students read and answer on their own. Circulate and ask individuals to point to the line in the text that supports their answer.
5. Share and close (5 min)
Two or three students share an answer and the evidence behind it. Restate cause and effect one final time in the students' own words, not yours.

Check for understanding

Ask each student to point to the evidence in the text for one of their answers. A student who has the right answer but cannot find the line has not yet learned cause and effect.

Differentiation

Extra support. Students who stall: pull them into a small group and rebuild cause and effect with concrete materials or a simpler text before asking for the written work again. Do not send the page home as homework, it will just rehearse the misunderstanding.

Extension. Students who finish early: ask them to write their own cause and effect problem for a partner to solve, then check the partner's work. Creating a problem is harder than solving one and it surfaces whether they really understand cause and effect.

Skills covered in this lesson

Cause and effect worksheets: color and light · Cause and effect

Questions teachers ask about teaching cause and effect

How many 5th Grade cause and effect worksheets: color and light worksheets are there?

6 printable worksheets, all free to preview. Downloads are included with a ClassWeekly free trial, and every page prints on standard 8.5 x 11 paper.

What age are cause and effect worksheets: color and light worksheets for?

These are written for 5th Grade students. Use the free preview to judge the fit for a particular child, since the same sheet often works a grade either side.

Are these cause and effect worksheets: color and light worksheets aligned to Common Core?

Yes. Each one shows the Common Core code it covers on its own page, so you can check the alignment yourself rather than taking our word for it.

Can I use these cause and effect worksheets: color and light worksheets for homeschool?

Yes. Nothing here assumes a classroom of 25, so they work the same one-to-one at the kitchen table as they do in a 5th Grade classroom, a learning center, or a tutoring session.