Lesson length30 min 45 min 60 min

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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.

First, Pia put on her socks. Next, she put on her shoes. Then she ran outside. What did Pia do first? (ran outside / put on her socks / ate lunch / put on her shoes) → put on her socksPrompt: 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? (cooked them in a pan / washed the bowl / cracked the eggs / bought eggs) → cooked them in a panPrompt: 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 / dug a hole / gave it water / covered it with soil) → dug a holePrompt: 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? (compare and contrast / sequence / problem and solution / cause and effect) → compare and contrastPrompt: How is the information organised?
The playground was always full of litter. The pupils decided to put more bins around and take turns being litter monitors. Now it is clean. How is this text organised? (compare and contrast / description / problem and solution / cause and effect) → problem and solutionPrompt: 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.

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? (description / sequence / compare and contrast / problem and solution) → descriptionPrompt: How is the information organised?

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)

Name

Date

Score/ 8

A Day at the Fire Station

Firefighters do much more than put out fires. At Station 9, the day begins at eight o'clock sharp with a check of every piece of equipment. The crew test the hoses, check the air tanks and make sure the ladders slide smoothly. "If something is broken, we need to know now, not when there's an emergency," says Captain Rivera. After the checks, the firefighters exercise for an hour. Their job is very physical. They must carry heavy hoses, climb ladders in thick protective suits and sometimes carry people to safety. In the afternoon, the crew often visit schools to teach children about fire safety. They show how to check smoke alarms and explain why you should never hide during a fire. "Get out, stay out, and call for help," Captain Rivera tells every class. When the alarm rings, everything changes. The crew pull on their gear, jump into the fire engine and are on their way in less than a minute. Calls might be for a house fire, a car accident or even a cat stuck up a tree. Whatever the emergency, the firefighters of Station 9 are ready.

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Question 1
Read "A Day at the Fire Station". How is this text mostly organised?
- A. as a list of fire facts
- B. as a problem and solution
- C. in the order things happen during the day
- D. as a comparison of two stations

The Shark on the Motorway

During a storm last spring, a photo exploded across social media. It showed a large shark swimming beside cars on a flooded motorway. Within hours it had been shared more than 80,000 times, often with captions such as "Stay indoors — sharks in the streets!" Fourteen-year-old Amira Haddad saw the photo in her family group chat. Something felt wrong. "The shark looked too sharp compared with the blurry water," she said. "So I decided to check." First, Amira ran a reverse image search. She found the same shark in a wildlife photo published years earlier, on a website about ocean animals. Next, she checked two local news sites. Neither mentioned sharks; both reported flooding and road closures. Finally, she found an article from a fact-checking organisation explaining that the image had been edited and had appeared during several different storms in different countries. Amira posted the fact-check in the group chat. "My uncle had already shared the photo," she laughed. "He was embarrassed, but he thanked me." Fact-checkers say edited images spread fastest when they are shocking and arrive during real emergencies, when people are anxious and want to warn others. Their advice is simple: pause before you share, look for the original source, and check whether reliable outlets are reporting the same thing.

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Question 2
Read "The Shark on the Motorway". How is paragraph 3 mainly organised?
- A. as a list of opinions
- B. as a sequence of steps (first, next, finally)
- C. as a problem with no solution
- D. as a comparison of two sharks

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

The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

The storm had been building all afternoon. By the time the sun set, waves as tall as houses were hurling themselves against the rocks below Gull Point Lighthouse, and the wind screamed around the tower like a wild animal. Nell pressed her face to the window of the little cottage. Her father had rowed to the mainland that morning to fetch the doctor for Mrs Penrose, and the sea had turned before he could return. Now, for the first time in her twelve years, Nell was alone at the lighthouse. She knew what that meant. Every night at dusk, the great lamp at the top of the tower had to be lit. Without it, ships would have no warning of the rocks. Nell grabbed the lantern and her father's oilskin coat, which hung down past her knees, and pushed open the door. The wind nearly knocked her flat. Bent double, she stumbled across the yard and into the tower. There were one hundred and twelve steps to the top. Nell had climbed them hundreds of times, but never in the dark, never with the whole tower trembling. Halfway up, her lantern flickered and almost went out. She stopped, cupped her hand around the flame and whispered, "Not now. Please, not now." At the top, her fingers were numb with cold. She trimmed the wick the way her father had shown her, filled the oil and struck a match. Nothing. A second match. Nothing. With the third, a tiny flame caught, grew and then blazed, and the great lens began to turn, sweeping its beam across the furious sea. Far out in the darkness, a ship's horn sounded twice. Nell did not know whose ship it was. But she knew that, tonight, it would find its way home.

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Question 4
Read "The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter". How does the writer build tension in paragraph 6?
- A. Nell falls down the stairs.
- B. The first two matches fail before the third one lights.
- C. The father arrives home.
- D. The ship crashes.

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.

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Question 5
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 introduces a counterargument.
- C. It suggests a cause for the octopus's intelligence.
- D. It tells a story about a single octopus.

The Fennec Fox

The fennec fox is the smallest fox in the world. It weighs about as much as a bag of sugar. It lives in the Sahara Desert in North Africa, one of the hottest places on Earth. The first thing most people notice about the fennec fox is its enormous ears. They can be as long as 15 centimetres, which is huge for such a small animal. The ears do two important jobs. First, they let heat escape from the fox's body, helping it to stay cool. Second, they are so sensitive that the fox can hear insects moving under the sand. The fennec fox has other ways to survive in the desert, too. Thick fur on the bottoms of its feet protects it from the burning sand. During the hottest part of the day, it rests in a cool burrow underground. It comes out to hunt at night, when the air is cooler. Water is hard to find in the desert, but the fennec fox can go a long time without drinking. It gets most of the water it needs from the food it eats, such as insects, plants and small animals.

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Question 6
Read "The Fennec Fox". How is paragraph 2 mainly organised?
- A. It describes a feature and then explains its uses.
- B. It compares two kinds of fox.
- C. It gives instructions.
- D. It tells a story in time order.

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Question 7
First, the egg hatches into a caterpillar. Next, the caterpillar eats and grows. Then it forms a chrysalis. Finally, a butterfly emerges. How is this text organised?
- A. compare and contrast
- B. problem and solution
- C. cause and effect
- D. chronological order (sequence)

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.

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Question 8
Read "The Moon's Night Walk (a poem)". Which words rhyme in the first verse?
- A. moon and tune
- B. coat and owls
- C. silver and sleepy
- D. sky and nearby

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

1. C. in the order things happen during the day
2. B. as a sequence of steps (first, next, finally)
3. C. in chronological order
4. B. The first two matches fail before the third one lights.
5. C. It suggests a cause for the octopus's intelligence.
6. A. It describes a feature and then explains its uses.
7. D. chronological order (sequence)
8. D. sky and nearby