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Think of the arrow as the cause (or the first event) and the asterisk or star as the effect (the second event, the event that happened as a direct result of the cause).
What is Cause & Effect?
Cause and effect is one of the main nonfiction text structures, but cause and effect help readers understand (or comprehend) what happens in fictional stories as well.
A cause is some event that will make another event happen. For instance, a thunderstorm may cause a game to be canceled, a tree to fall, or a road to flood. The first event is the thunderstorm occurring. This makes the other events happen in turn. The effect, then is the event that happened as a direct result of another event. The "other" events from my example above are the effects - a game to be canceled, a tree to fall, or a road to flood - because they wouldn't have occurred if the thunderstorm hadn't happened first.
Types of Cause & Effect
Types of Cause & Effect
There are a couple of different types of cause and effect structures that will help students better understand cause and effect relationships. A single cause can set into motion a single reaction (like the game being cancelled), a couple of separate and unrelated reactions (such as a game to be canceled, a tree to falling, or a road becoming flooded), or it could set off a chain of events or series of reactions (perhaps lightning striking a tree, the tree landing on a fence, the fence coming down, and someone's animals escaping from the fence). In each of these instances, there was a cause, or event, that made another event (or two or three), the effect(s), occur. Likewise, several causes may result in a single effect. For instance, perhaps I missed some days of class, I didn't study, and I stayed up late the night before a test. These three causes may result in a poor grade for me when I go to take my test.
Links
Links
Below are three possible resources to help with those rusty cause and effect skills.
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