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 laid an egg. / It made a cocoon. / The caterpillar ate.) → A butterfly came out.Prompt: Look for time words: first, then, next, after, finally.
The alarm rang. Amy got up and brushed her teeth. After that, she ate breakfast. What did Amy do right after she got up? (ate breakfast / brushed her teeth / set the alarm / went to bed) → brushed her teethPrompt: 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? (gave it water / covered it with soil / dug a hole / picked a flower) → 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.

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 / sequence / compare and contrast / description) → descriptionPrompt: How is the information organised?
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? (chronological order (sequence) / problem and solution / cause and effect / compare and contrast) → chronological order (sequence)Prompt: 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 / problem and solution / compare and contrast / sequence) → 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)

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Date

Score/ 8

The Attic

The attic door had been painted shut for as long as Daniel could remember. His mother said there was nothing up there but dust and old suitcases. So when the decorators scraped away the paint on the first Saturday of the summer holidays, Daniel was the first one up the narrow stairs. The air was thick and warm and smelt of mothballs. Thin blades of light slid through gaps in the roof tiles and lay across the floorboards like fallen swords. In the far corner, beneath a sheet greyed with age, something waited. Daniel crossed the room slowly. Each board groaned beneath him as if complaining about being woken. He reached out, hesitated, then pulled the sheet away in one quick movement. It was a desk – small, battered, and covered in carvings. Initials. Dates. A crooked drawing of a sailing boat. And there, in the corner, carved more deeply than all the rest, were three letters he knew better than his own name: D.A.M. Daniel Adebayo Mensah. His grandfather. The grandfather who had died two years before Daniel was born, and whom his mother never spoke about. He ran his fingers over the letters. Downstairs, someone switched on a radio, and a burst of music floated up through the floor. Daniel did not move. For the first time, the silence in the attic did not feel empty. It felt like someone waiting to tell him a story.

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Question 1
Read "The Attic". Why does the writer reveal the initials D.A.M. before explaining who they belong to?
- A. to change the setting
- B. to show Daniel cannot read
- C. because the reader already knows
- D. to create a moment of suspense before the discovery

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 2
Read "The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter". How does the writer build tension in paragraph 6?
- A. The ship crashes.
- B. Nell falls down the stairs.
- C. The father arrives home.
- D. The first two matches fail before the third one lights.

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.

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Question 3
Read "Speech: Our Beach, Our Responsibility". How does the speaker make the ending powerful?
- A. She lists rules for the clean-up.
- B. She tells a sad story.
- C. She introduces a new problem.
- D. She uses the earlier numbers to imagine a much bigger result.

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 4
Read "The Clever Octopus". What is the relationship between paragraph 4 and the rest of the text?
- A. It suggests a cause for the octopus's intelligence.
- B. It introduces a counterargument.
- C. It describes how to keep an octopus.
- D. It tells a story about a single octopus.

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 5
Read "A Letter to the Council". How does Priya organise her reasons?
- A. as a poem
- B. as a list of questions
- C. in alphabetical order
- D. with the words First and Second

Inside a Volcano

Deep beneath our feet, the Earth is extremely hot – hot enough to melt rock. This melted rock is called magma. Because magma is lighter than the solid rock around it, it slowly rises upward. Sometimes it collects in a huge underground pool called a magma chamber. A volcano forms where magma finds a way to the surface. When the pressure in the magma chamber becomes too great, the magma bursts out through cracks or vents. Once it reaches the surface, it is called lava. Over time, layers of cooled lava and ash can build up to form a mountain. Most volcanoes are found near the edges of tectonic plates, the giant slabs of rock that make up the Earth's outer layer. More than half of the world's active volcanoes surround the Pacific Ocean, in a horseshoe-shaped zone known as the Ring of Fire. Scientists sort volcanoes into three groups. Active volcanoes have erupted recently and could erupt again. Dormant volcanoes have not erupted for a very long time but might wake up in the future. Extinct volcanoes are not expected to erupt ever again. Although eruptions can be deadly, volcanoes also bring benefits. Volcanic ash breaks down into rich soil, which is why many farms are found on the slopes of old volcanoes. In some countries, such as Iceland, the heat from underground is used to warm homes and produce electricity.

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Question 6
Read "Inside a Volcano". How is paragraph 4 organised?
- A. It argues for one opinion.
- B. It describes a problem and its solution.
- C. It classifies volcanoes into groups.
- D. It tells events in time order.

Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)

The harbour did not so much wake as surrender to the morning. Fog lay over the water like a damp grey blanket that someone had forgotten to fold, and the fishing boats nodded at their moorings, half-asleep, their ropes creaking in complaint. Old Tomas was already there. He was always there. He sat on an upturned crate at the end of the quay, mending a net with fingers that had long ago stopped feeling the cold. His knife flashed, paused, flashed again. Every so often he lifted his head and sniffed the air, as if the sea had written him a letter only he could read. Behind him, the town stirred reluctantly. A shutter rattled up. A dog barked twice and thought better of it. Somewhere a kettle began its thin, rising whistle. The smell of bread drifted from the bakery on Water Lane and mixed with the older, deeper smells of salt, diesel and fish. Then the sun arrived. It did not rise so much as break through – one bright blade splitting the fog, then another, until the whole harbour was suddenly ablaze. The water turned from slate to copper. Gulls exploded upward from the harbour wall, screaming. The boats seemed to sit up straighter. Tomas did not look up. He tied off the last knot, tested it with a sharp tug, and laid the net across his knees like a sleeping cat. Only then did he raise his eyes to the brightening sea, and for a moment, just a moment, his face softened into something very close to a smile.

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Question 7
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". How does the focus shift in paragraph 4 compared with paragraph 3?
- A. from morning to night
- B. from the harbour to a different town
- C. from Tomas's thoughts to his past
- D. from quiet, small sounds of the town to a sudden, dramatic burst of light

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 8
Read "The Fennec Fox". How is paragraph 2 mainly organised?
- A. It compares two kinds of fox.
- B. It gives instructions.
- C. It describes a feature and then explains its uses.
- D. It tells a story in time order.

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

1. D. to create a moment of suspense before the discovery
2. D. The first two matches fail before the third one lights.
3. D. She uses the earlier numbers to imagine a much bigger result.
4. A. It suggests a cause for the octopus's intelligence.
5. D. with the words First and Second
6. C. It classifies volcanoes into groups.
7. D. from quiet, small sounds of the town to a sudden, dramatic burst of light
8. C. It describes a feature and then explains its uses.