Cause and Effect – 3 Books and Lessons to Teach Cause and Effect

Here is a chart with three mini-lesson statements and examples of how to frame your whole class discussion.  Fill out your charts with these organizers as you discuss each book with the class!

The Giving Tree is a wonderful story that leads into some amazing lessons on cause and effect.  As the boy comes back to take more from the tree, there are consequences he doesn't realize until much later in life.

Teach students about another culture, while thinking about how our thrown-out plastic bags impact the environment in this true story, One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia .  The women in this story turn thrown-away plastic bags into beautiful purses to sell.  A great cause and effect example!

Those Shoes is a great story about a young boy who feels the pressure to have the ‘cool' shoes that all his friends are wearing.  The only problem is his family cannot afford them.  There are many cause and effect examples throughout this fabulous story about being yourself and trying to fit in at the same time.

Check out the resource below that features 20 different graphic organizers to use with any text and reinforce these cause and effect comprehension skills:

1. Cause and Effect Matching Set One
2. Cause and Effect Matching Set Two
3. Cause and Effect Matching Set Three
4. If…Then…
5. Identifying Causes in Texts
6. Identifying Effects in Texts
7. Inferring Causes in Texts
8. Inferring Effects in Texts
9. What Happened/Why It Happened
10. Creating Causes Set One
11. Creating Causes Set Two
12. Creating Causes Set Three
13. Creating Effects Set One 
14. Creating Effects Set Two
15. Creating Effects Set Three
16. Cause and Effect Signal Words
17. Illustrating Cause and Effect 
18. One Cause, Multiple Effects Set One
19. One Cause, Multiple Effects Set Two
20. One Cause, Multiple Effects in Text