Exploring Cause and Effect Using Expository Texts About Natural Disasters

This lesson helps students explore the nature and structure of expository texts that focus on cause and effect using books on natural disasters. Expository texts are a key component of literacy, but they are often not getting introduced to students until the later grades. This lesson will be valuable to teachers introducing their students to more expository text. In the lesson, students begin by activating prior knowledge about cause and effect; the teacher then models discovering these relationships in a text and recording in a graphic organizer what the relationships that the class finds. Then, students work in small groups to apply what they learned using related books and then write paragraphs outlining the cause-and-effect relationships they have found. *This is crosscurricular with science since it covers natural disasters.

Weblink address (URL):

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives:

Students will:

Access prior knowledge by identifying what they know about cause-and-effect relationships.
Gain knowledge by defining cause and effect, learning key words that indicate cause-and-effect relationships in expository text, and reviewing a text containing these relationships during a whole-class exercise.
Apply what they have learned about cause and effect and demonstrate comprehension of it by locating cause-and-effect relationships within expository text, recording these findings on two graphic organizers, and then using the organizers to write a paragraph.

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level:

Understanding

Helpful Hints

Materials:

Danger! Volcanoes by Seymour Simon (SeaStar Books; 2002)
Computer with Internet access
LCD projector

References

Contributors:

Jessie Beaumont-Schmid

Originator:

Ayers Institute for Learning & Innovation