Cause and Effect for Middle Schoolers in English Class
Hi and welcome to this video lesson on what we call cause and effect and chronology.
When we read, we only understand the words and sentences because they are ordered. But books can be ordered and organized in different ways.
Two types of ordering are:
1. cause and effect
2. chronology.
Let’s talk about cause and effect first.
The term cause and effect means that when one thing happens in a story, another thing happens as a result. If the wind blows very hard and an old tree falls over, the cause was the wing blowing and the effect was the tree falling. Here’s another example: A man rides the train home from work, but he was so tired he fell asleep and missed his station. The cause was the man falling asleep and the effect was the man missed his station.
Now let’s look at chronology.
Chronology is a word that has to do with time. The chrono part of the word used to mean time in Latin and it still holds the same meaning for us today. When we order things chronologically, we are placing them in the order that they happened. An example might be: Sarah woke up, made her bed, and ate breakfast. Those things were in the order that they happened. If I mixed them up: Sarah ate breakfast, woke up, and made her bed, it would be a very confusing story. That’s why ordering things chronologically is so important.
Quite often, stories can be ordered using both cause and effect and chronology, so you need to understand both.
I will now give you a few examples, and I want you to figure out the cause and effects, and whether it’s in chronological order or not.
- Jimmy ate too much ice cream and felt sick.
- the cause was eating too much ice cream, the effect was getting sick
- this story is in chronological order
- Shaquoya took too long to eat breakfast and missed her school bus.
- cause – she took too long to eat, effect – missed the bus
- this story is in chronological order
- Matt was afraid of the dog, because he was bitten by a dog when he was little and he probably won’t ever get a dog in the future.
- cause – a bad experience with dogs, effect – doesn’t like dogs
- not really in chronological order.
- The king had given his promise, so he was forced to agree.
- cause – the king gave his promise, effect – is that he had to agree.
- this story is in chronological order.
I hope that helps, thanks for watching this video lesson. Until next time, happy studying.