Back to the lesson plan builder
Lesson length30 min45 min60 min
Questions🔀 New questions

Print the plan for yourself; the student sheet prints on its own page after it.

English lesson plan · 4th grade (Year 5 in England) · 30 minutes

Text structure (cause–effect, compare, problem–solution)

Reading Comprehension

CCSS RI.4.5CCSS RI.5.5England: Y5/6 ReadingEngland: KS2 SATs Reading

Objective and success criteria

Students will: Text structure (cause–effect, compare, problem–solution).

  • I can answer questions on today's skill on my own, without help.
  • I can explain each step and say why it works.
  • I can check my answer and spot a mistake.

Before and after

Needs first: Order of events; Main idea and supporting details

Leads to: Analysing structure; Plot stages: exposition to resolution; Foreshadowing, flashback, cliffhanger and red herring

Materials: A short text or extract (one copy each), Highlighters, Question cards, Mini whiteboards, A short model text on the board, Printed student sheet (below).

Warm-up · 4 min

  • Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Order of events; Main idea and supporting details). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
  • Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.
  1. The caterpillar ate and ate. Then it made a cocoon. At last, a butterfly came out. What happened last? (A butterfly came out. / It laid an egg. / It made a cocoon. / The caterpillar ate.) → A butterfly came out.Prompt: Look for time words: first, then, next, after, finally.
  2. First, Pia put on her socks. Next, she put on her shoes. Then she ran outside. What did Pia do first? (put on her socks / ate lunch / ran outside / put on her shoes) → put on her socksPrompt: Look for time words: first, then, next, after, finally.
  3. Dad cracked two eggs into a bowl. He mixed them. Then he cooked them in a pan. What did Dad do after he mixed the eggs? (cooked them in a pan / cracked the eggs / washed the bowl / bought eggs) → cooked them in a panPrompt: Look for time words: first, then, next, after, finally.

Hook · 3 min

  • Read the first lines of a short text aloud and ask what students predict will happen and why.
  • Share the objective: Text structure (cause–effect, compare, problem–solution). Read the success criteria together.

I do: model it · 7 min

  • Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
  • Example: The desert is hot and dry. Sand dunes stretch for miles, cacti stand tall, and lizards dart between the rocks. How is this text organised?
  • Step 1: Text structure is how a writer organises ideas.
  • Step 2: So the answer is: description
  • Answer: description
  • Pause after each step and ask a student to say what comes next.

We do: guided practice · 6 min

  • Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
  • Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.
  1. The desert is hot and dry. Sand dunes stretch for miles, cacti stand tall, and lizards dart between the rocks. How is this text organised? (problem and solution / description / compare and contrast / sequence) → descriptionPrompt: How is the information organised?
  2. Frogs and toads are both amphibians. However, frogs have smooth, wet skin, while toads have dry, bumpy skin. How is this text organised? (compare and contrast / sequence / cause and effect / problem and solution) → compare and contrastPrompt: How is the information organised?

You do: independent practice · 7 min

  • Students work on the student sheet. Circulate and check the first two answers of every student early.
  • Students who finish: write a question of their own for a partner, with the answer.

The 6 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

Exit ticket · 3 min

  • Two questions on their own. Sort answers into got it / nearly / not yet to plan the next lesson.

Watch out for

  • Answering from memory or opinion instead of evidence in the text.
  • Copying a long quote without explaining what it shows.

Support and stretch

Support

  • Review first: Order of events.
  • Use concrete materials: a short text or extract (one copy each).
  • Give the first step of each question, or a partly worked example to finish.
  • Pair with a confident partner for the guided practice.

Stretch

  • Move on to: Analysing structure; Plot stages: exposition to resolution; Foreshadowing, flashback, cliffhanger and red herring.
  • Explain a common mistake in writing and how to fix it.
  • Write a word problem that uses today's skill, then solve a partner's.

Homework and more practice

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/english/grade-4.

Free lesson plan from eurekami.com/lesson-plan-builder

eurekami

Text structure (cause–effect, compare, problem–solution)

Name

Date

Score/ 6

The Clever Octopus

If you wanted to design an intelligent animal from scratch, you probably would not start with a creature that has no bones, three hearts and blue blood. Yet the octopus is one of the most remarkable problem-solvers in the animal kingdom. In laboratories, octopuses have learned to unscrew jar lids to reach crabs inside. Some have escaped from their tanks at night, crept across the floor to a neighbouring tank to eat the fish, and then returned home before morning. In the wild, veined octopuses have been filmed collecting coconut shells, carrying them across the seabed and assembling them into a portable shelter – one of the few known examples of tool use by an invertebrate. What makes this intelligence so surprising is how different the octopus brain is from ours. About two-thirds of its roughly 500 million nerve cells are not in its head at all but in its eight arms. Each arm can taste, touch and even make simple decisions on its own. Scientists are still debating what it might feel like to be an animal whose thinking is spread throughout its body. The octopus's cleverness may be linked to its lifestyle. Without a shell for protection, it must outwit predators by hiding, changing colour in a fraction of a second, or squeezing through gaps no bigger than its beak. Survival depends on flexible thinking. Strangely, most octopuses live only one or two years. They have no parents to teach them and usually die soon after laying eggs. Every skill they show, they must largely work out for themselves.

  1. Question 1

    Read "The Clever Octopus". What is the relationship between paragraph 4 and the rest of the text?

    • A. It describes how to keep an octopus.
    • B. It tells a story about a single octopus.
    • C. It suggests a cause for the octopus's intelligence.
    • D. It introduces a counterargument.

The Moon's Night Walk (a poem)

The moon puts on her silver coat and tiptoes up the sky. She hums a tune to sleepy owls and winks at clouds nearby. She paints the rooftops pearly white, she lights the cat's way home, she peeps into the children's rooms to check they're not alone. She counts the stars like sleeping sheep, she sings the sea to rest, she hangs a lantern on the hill for travellers in the west. And when the sun yawns in the east and stretches out his rays, the moon slips off her silver coat and hides away for days. But look up on a quiet night when all the town's asleep: she's tiptoeing across the sky with promises to keep.

  1. Question 2

    Read "The Moon's Night Walk (a poem)". Which words rhyme in the first verse?

    • A. coat and owls
    • B. moon and tune
    • C. sky and nearby
    • D. silver and sleepy

A Helicopter on Mars

In February 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars. Tucked underneath it was a passenger: a tiny helicopter called Ingenuity. It weighed only about 1.8 kilograms, a little less than a big bag of flour. Flying on Mars is much harder than flying on Earth. The air on Mars is extremely thin, about one hundredth as thick as the air we breathe. Helicopter blades push against the air to lift off, so with so little air, Ingenuity's blades had to spin very fast: about 2,400 times a minute. On 19 April 2021, Ingenuity rose about three metres into the Martian sky, hovered for about forty seconds and landed again. It was the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Engineers on Earth cheered, even though the radio signals took several minutes to reach them. Ingenuity was only meant to make five test flights. Instead, it made 72. It scouted ahead for the rover, taking photos of rocks and slopes so that drivers on Earth could choose safe routes. In January 2024, one of Ingenuity's blades was damaged during a landing, and the mission ended. The little helicopter still sits on Mars today, and engineers are already using what they learned to design bigger flying machines for future missions.

  1. Question 3

    Read "A Helicopter on Mars". How is this text mainly organised?

    • A. as a problem with no solution
    • B. as a list of opinions
    • C. as a comparison of two planets
    • D. in time order, from landing to the end of the mission

A Letter to the Council

Dear Councillors, I am writing to ask you not to close Elm Street Library. I am nine years old, and the library is one of the most important places in our town. First, the library helps children learn. Every Saturday, there is a story club where younger children listen to stories and older children like me read aloud. Many families cannot afford to buy lots of books, but at the library everyone can borrow them for free. Second, the library is not just for children. My neighbour, Mr Haddad, goes there every week to use the computers because he does not have one at home. He uses them to apply for jobs and to talk to his grandchildren in another country. Some people say that everything is online now, so we do not need libraries. However, not everyone has the internet at home, and a website cannot give you a quiet, warm place to study or a librarian who helps you find exactly the right book. Please keep our library open. It belongs to all of us. Yours faithfully, Priya Shah

  1. Question 4

    Read "A Letter to the Council". How does Priya organise her reasons?

    • A. in alphabetical order
    • B. as a list of questions
    • C. as a poem
    • D. with the words First and Second

Speech: Our Beach, Our Responsibility

Good morning, everyone. Last Saturday, twenty-three pupils from this school spent three hours on Sandy Bay beach. We collected forty-one bags of rubbish. Forty-one. Bottles, crisp packets, fishing line, a shoe, and – I promise you this is true – an entire garden chair. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. "It's not my rubbish. Why should I pick it up?" And you're right: most of us didn't drop it. But here's the thing. The seal pup that gets tangled in that fishing line doesn't care whose fault it was. The toddler who cuts her foot on broken glass doesn't care either. That beach belongs to all of us. We swim there in summer. We walk our dogs there in winter. Some of us learned to ride our bikes on the promenade. If it belongs to all of us, then looking after it belongs to all of us too. So I'm asking you for just one thing. Not money. Not your whole weekend. Just two hours, on the first Saturday of next month. Bring gloves, bring a friend, bring your little brother if you have to. Because if twenty-three of us can fill forty-one bags, imagine what four hundred of us could do. Thank you.

  1. Question 5

    Read "Speech: Our Beach, Our Responsibility". How does the speaker make the ending powerful?

    • A. She introduces a new problem.
    • B. She tells a sad story.
    • C. She lists rules for the clean-up.
    • D. She uses the earlier numbers to imagine a much bigger result.

Rethinking Screen Time

Few debates generate as much anxiety among parents as the question of screen time. Headlines warn that smartphones are "destroying a generation", while technology companies insist that their products connect and empower young people. The truth, as so often, is more complicated than either side admits. Part of the problem is that "screen time" is a crude measure. An hour spent video-calling a grandparent, coding a game or researching a school project is not the same as an hour spent scrolling through an endless feed of short videos. Researchers increasingly argue that what young people do on screens matters more than how long they spend on them. That said, quantity is not irrelevant. Several large studies have linked very heavy use – more than five or six hours a day of recreational screen time – to poorer sleep and lower wellbeing. Screens can displace other activities that support health: exercise, face-to-face friendship and, crucially, sleep. Light from devices and the stimulation of social media late at night can delay sleep for teenagers, whose body clocks already push them towards later bedtimes. It is worth noting, however, that most of these studies show correlation, not causation. Teenagers who are already unhappy may turn to their phones more, rather than their phones making them unhappy. Untangling cause and effect is notoriously difficult. What, then, should families do? Rather than fixating on a single number, experts suggest asking three questions. Is screen use getting in the way of sleep? Is it crowding out exercise and real-world relationships? And does the young person feel in control of it, or controlled by it? If the answers are reassuring, the exact number of minutes may matter less than we fear.

  1. Question 6

    Read "Rethinking Screen Time". What is the function of paragraph 4?

    • A. It adds a caution about how to interpret the research in paragraph 3.
    • B. It introduces the topic for the first time.
    • C. It describes a specific family.
    • D. It gives the writer's final advice.

Free from eurekami.com

for the adult only

Answer key: Text structure (cause–effect, compare, problem–solution)

  1. 1. C. It suggests a cause for the octopus's intelligence.

  2. 2. C. sky and nearby

  3. 3. D. in time order, from landing to the end of the mission

  4. 4. D. with the words First and Second

  5. 5. D. She uses the earlier numbers to imagine a much bigger result.

  6. 6. A. It adds a caution about how to interpret the research in paragraph 3.