Through an exploration of stories and classroom questions, Year 1 students develop their understanding of cause and effect and build on their critical thinking skills to make connections within their learning and the world around them. Year 1 teacher, Mrs Courtney O’Brien provides a snapshot of how St Catherine’s ‘Thinking Classroom’ builds this capacity.

This week during our English lessons we have focused on how cause and effect can enhance a student’s ability to fully comprehend what they have read and strengthen their writing skills.

Rainbow Bear by Stephen Michael King is the story of a polar bear who returns from a trip to the city with bright coloured art materials for his family.In the story, Bear wakes up with brightly coloured fur. We identified this as the effect. The cubs, painting him when he was asleep, was the cause.

As a class, we articulated this by composing the sentence ‘Bear woke up looking a little different because the cubs painted his fur’. Through using words  such as ‘now that’, ‘since’, ‘therefore’, ‘which caused’, ‘because of’, and ‘so’ the girls are able to connect their ideas.

The concept of cause and effect are so prevalent in our lives that the students usually pick up on them quickly.

Some examples the girls came up with include:

“I spilled my glass of milk because my brother bumped into me.”

“I got sunburnt because I forgot to put sunscreen on.”

The girls displayed a very good implicit understanding of the concepts in their own reading and writing. Other picture books we will be investigating to further develop our thinking skills include: The Lorax by Dr Seuss, Stuck by Oliver Jeffers, No David! By David Shannon.

Cause and effect help children recognise relationships between two things, or when we demonstrate that one event is the result of another.  Our Year 1 girls also explore the concept of cause and effect during their STEM classes. Through their learning in STEM they seek to explain and understand the natural world.  The cause explains why something happens, the effect is the description of what happened.

Cause and Effect @Home

Some ideas to further explore cause and effect at home include activities such as:

• Posing questions such as, What happens when we fill up the ice tray with water and put it into the freezer?, What would happen to ice cream if we left it in the sun?,  If we don’t water this plant, what would happen to it?
• Connecting favourite books to real life experiences to solidify understanding and open up powerful conversations. The picture book, Mr Archimedes’ Bath by Pamela Allen is a wonderful example of this, with children being able to see that when they get in the bath the water rises, just like in the story!

Further suggestions to assist children to develop their understanding of cause and effect can be found via the link here.