Lesson length30 min 45 min 60 min

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

English lesson plan · 4th grade (Year 5 in England) · 45 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 · 5 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.

The caterpillar ate and ate. Then it made a cocoon. At last, a butterfly came out. What happened last? (A butterfly came out. / It made a cocoon. / The caterpillar ate. / It laid an egg.) → A butterfly came out.Prompt: Look for time words: first, then, next, after, finally.
Lee dug a hole. He put in a seed. Then he covered it with soil and gave it water. What did Lee do before he put in the seed? (picked a flower / covered it with soil / dug a hole / gave it water) → dug a holePrompt: Look for time words: first, then, next, after, finally.
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? (washed the bowl / cracked the eggs / bought eggs / cooked them in a pan) → cooked them in a panPrompt: Look for time words: first, then, next, after, finally.

Hook · 5 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 · 10 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 · 10 min

Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.

Frogs and toads are both amphibians. However, frogs have smooth, wet skin, while toads have dry, bumpy skin. How is this text organised? (sequence / cause and effect / compare and contrast / problem and solution) → compare and contrastPrompt: How is the information organised?
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 / compare and contrast / sequence / description) → descriptionPrompt: How is the information organised?

You do: independent practice · 10 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 8 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

Exit ticket · 5 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

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

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Lady Montagu and the Smallpox Gamble

In the early eighteenth century, smallpox was one of the most feared diseases in Europe. It killed around three in every ten people it infected and left many survivors scarred or blind. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu knew its cruelty personally: the disease had killed her brother and marked her own face. In 1717, while living in Constantinople (now Istanbul), where her husband was the British ambassador, she observed a remarkable practice. Local women would take a small amount of material from a mild smallpox sore and scratch it into the skin of a healthy person. The person usually developed a mild illness and was then protected for life. This process was called variolation. Montagu was so impressed that she had her young son variolated. When she returned to England, she campaigned to spread the practice, despite fierce opposition. Some doctors resented being taught by a woman; others distrusted a practice from abroad. To win public confidence, Montagu had her daughter variolated in front of physicians from the royal court. Variolation was not without risk: a small number of patients developed severe smallpox, and they could infect others. Decades later, in 1796, Edward Jenner developed a safer method using cowpox, a related but much milder disease. His method, called vaccination after the Latin word for cow, gradually replaced variolation. Smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980. Jenner is often called the father of vaccination, but the story began with the courage of a woman who noticed what others had overlooked.

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Question 1
Read "Lady Montagu and the Smallpox Gamble". How does paragraph 4 relate to paragraph 3?
- A. It argues that Montagu was wrong.
- B. It presents a limitation of variolation and the safer method that followed.
- C. It repeats the same information.
- D. It describes Montagu's childhood.

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Question 2
Frogs and toads are both amphibians. However, frogs have smooth, wet skin, while toads have dry, bumpy skin. How is this text organised?
- A. sequence
- B. compare and contrast
- C. problem and solution
- D. cause and effect

The Margin

Zainab had read the library book three times before she noticed the handwriting. It was in the margin of page 112, so faint she had taken it for a smudge. In tiny, slanted letters, someone had written: "Don't trust the narrator." Underneath, in different ink and a rounder hand, someone else had replied: "Why not?" And beneath that, in the first writer's slant: "Read chapter 9 again." She read chapter 9 again. Then she read it a fourth time, and a fifth, and on the sixth she saw it – a single sentence where the narrator claimed to have been at home when, three chapters earlier, he had described himself on a train. A lie, hidden in plain sight. The whole story tilted, like a picture knocked crooked on a wall. Zainab sat back. She checked the date stamps on the card inside the front cover. The book had been borrowed forty-seven times since 1994. Somewhere among those forty-seven readers were two people who had held a conversation across years without ever meeting. She found a pencil. For a long time she hesitated over the page, feeling as if she were about to speak in a room full of strangers. Then, carefully, beneath the other two, she wrote: "Found it. Thank you." When she returned the book, the librarian frowned at the pencil marks. Zainab apologised. But as she walked home, she wondered who would be next to find them.

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Question 3
Read "The Margin". What is the effect of the final sentence?
- A. It shows Zainab regrets writing.
- B. It reveals who the first writer was.
- C. It ends the story with a twist about the librarian.
- D. It suggests the chain of readers will continue.

How to Build a Junk Robot

Do you have a pile of empty boxes and bottle tops? Instead of throwing them away, turn them into a robot! This project takes about an hour. You will need: one cereal box, one smaller box (such as a toothpaste box), four cardboard tubes, bottle tops, glue, scissors and some tape. Step 1: Ask an adult to help you cut a hole in the top of the cereal box. This will be the robot's body. Step 2: Glue the smaller box on top of the body to make the head. Hold it in place for a minute while the glue sets. Step 3: Tape two cardboard tubes to the sides of the body for arms and two to the bottom for legs. Step 4: Glue bottle tops onto the head for eyes and onto the body for buttons and dials. Step 5: Leave your robot to dry overnight before you play with it. Top tip: Give your robot a name and write it on a label. Robots with names are much more fun!

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Question 4
Read "How to Build a Junk Robot". What should you do just after gluing on the head?
- A. Hold it in place for a minute.
- B. Leave it to dry overnight.
- C. Cut a hole in the box.
- D. Give it a name.

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.

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Question 5
Read "A Helicopter on Mars". How is this text mainly organised?
- A. as a list of opinions
- B. as a comparison of two planets
- C. in time order, from landing to the end of the mission
- D. as a problem with no solution

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

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Question 6
Read "A Letter to the Council". How does Priya organise her reasons?
- A. as a poem
- B. with the words First and Second
- C. in alphabetical order
- D. as a list of questions

How to Build a Junk Robot

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Question 7
Read "How to Build a Junk Robot". Why are the steps numbered?
- A. to make the text longer
- B. to show how many robots to make
- C. so they are followed in the right order
- D. to show which step is most fun

The Long Wall

The Great Wall of China is not one wall at all. It is a network of walls, trenches and watchtowers built and rebuilt over more than two thousand years by different dynasties. If all its sections were laid end to end, they would stretch over 21,000 kilometres – more than half the distance around the Earth. The earliest walls were built from packed earth around the seventh century BCE, when rival Chinese states defended their borders from one another. In about 220 BCE, the first emperor of a united China, Qin Shi Huang, ordered many of these separate walls to be joined together to protect the north from raiding groups. The sections that most visitors see today are far younger. They were built during the Ming dynasty, between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ming builders used bricks and stone, which is why these sections have survived so well. Watchtowers were placed close enough together for soldiers to send signals using smoke by day and fire by night. The wall came at a terrible cost. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, prisoners and farmers were forced to work on it, often in freezing mountains or burning deserts. Many died, and stories and songs about their suffering are still told. Did the wall work? Historians disagree. It slowed down small raids and helped control trade and travel, but determined armies could still break through or simply go around it. Today, its greatest power may be as a symbol – of human effort, of history and of a nation's identity.

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Question 8
Read "The Long Wall". How are paragraphs 2 and 3 mainly organised?
- A. as a comparison of two countries
- B. in chronological order
- C. as a problem and solution
- D. as a list of opinions

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

1. B. It presents a limitation of variolation and the safer method that followed.
2. B. compare and contrast
3. D. It suggests the chain of readers will continue.
4. A. Hold it in place for a minute.
5. C. in time order, from landing to the end of the mission
6. B. with the words First and Second
7. C. so they are followed in the right order
8. B. in chronological order