Ready-to-teach lesson
Analyze Cause and Effect
Stephanie's Ponytail - Grade 1 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
17 minutes Find what causes what in this book, and say the reason in your own words.
PRODUCT
Three pairs of boxes joined by 'because' Essential question: Why did a hairstyle end up with a whole class walking into walls?
- Materials
- Text to mark
- • The book
- • Passage 4 - a crowd of side ponytails
- • One
- • Passage 8 - the walk to school, hair over her eyes
- cause-and-effect
- sheet each
- Prepared passages: Passage 4, Passage 8, Passage 9
Lesson sequence
1 Launch - 3 min
- Passage 9 - the classroom, everyone colliding
- Focus:
- Four trees, and a reason
- Teacher direction:
- Read the list of things Stephanie bumps into on her way to school. Ask the class why she bumped into them. The answer is on the same page and they will find it.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 8 2 Teacher model - 5 min
- Teacher model:
- I read the front-ponytail page and I say the because out loud: she walks into four trees, then three cars, then two houses, and last of all a principal - and the reason is that her hair is hanging down in front of her nose so she cannot see where she is going. Her mother had even warned her - nobody will know if she is coming or going. Then I read the next page and do the same thing: the whole class bumps into the desks and the walls and each other, because they copied the ponytail they had just called ugly.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 8, Passage 9 3 Because of the ponytail - 9 min
- Focus:
- An effect, and the cause on the same page
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 4, 8 and 9, write down what happened and what caused it, for three things in this book.
page 1
- Expected answer:
- Stephanie walked into four trees, then three cars, then two houses, and last a principal, because the ponytail hanging in front of her nose meant she could not see where she was going. The whole class bumped into the desks, the walls and each other, and three girls went into the wrong bathroom, because they had all copied that same ponytail and none of them could see either. And every one of Stephanie's ponytails ended up on other heads, because the children copy whatever she wears even after calling it ugly - first the girls, then the boys as well, then the teacher too.
- Student product:
- Three pairs: what happened, and why
- Prepared text:
- Passage 4, Passage 8, Passage 9
Support & extension
Above: The copying is a cause too, but not the same kind as hair over your eyes. Explain the difference.
Below: Fill the three pairs of boxes, using the word because each time.
Assessment
- Says she could not see because of the ponytail in front of her nose
- Names something she bumped into
- Says the class bumped into things for the same reason
- Says the children copied Stephanie's ponytail each time
- Says more people copied as the book went on
page 2