Some books and other ideas for c/e

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Some books and other ideas for c/e
By Heather Schumacher

I like to start with the nursery rhyme "Hickory Dickory Dock". We list causes for the mouse to run up the clock.

I also use "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears" and have the students draw pictures of each character.
Then we take a large piece of butcher paper, glue the characters in order, and write the story sequence using the word SO in between events.
I cut out various pictures from newspaper. Each student takes a picture and writes the cause and effect. The picture is either the cause or effect. If it was a picture of a football player catching the ball, the cause might be: The football player

caught the ball. The effect might be: The team scored a touchdown. These turn out very nice and go out in the hallway.

I also teach Ancient Greece and have used the myths of Arachne the Weaver and Pandora's Box. These both feature Greek gods so you might not want to use it if your parents might be upset. I've never had a parent get upset, but others on my grade level have.

When my students were very comfortable with cause and effect I read one of the books by Laura Numeroff like "If you give a mouse a cookie". I had the major events already written on sentence strips. They identified the first event and I stapled the two ends to make a circle. Then they identified the effect and I attached it to start a chain. We kept going with each effect turning into a cause for another effect. This helped reinforce the idea that cause and effect was a chain of events.