Podcast Transcript
A cause is something that happens. An effect is something that happens because of the cause. Like this sentence: “I forgot to set my alarm clock, so I was late for school.” The cause of being late for school was forgetting to set the alarm clock. The effect of forgetting to set the alarm clock is being late for school. Questions about cause and effect usually begin with the key words why, what happened or because.
In the previous episode, we focused on the third reading strategy – Understanding Sequence.
This episode of the CARS & STARS Online podcast is about Recognising Cause and Effect, which is one of the main reading strategies that underpins the entirety of CARS & STARS Online.
But what are reading strategies, and why should you know about them?
Learning to read can be a difficult task, but teaching someone to read can be another thing entirely. Learning to decode letters and sound out words are one thing, but neither skill really assists in the most important aspect of reading – that of comprehending what one reads, of being able to understand what something is saying rather than just being able to read it as text.
Understanding text in this way has often been something students have been expected to just pick up on their own – or something that will develop as the ability to decode the text on a literal level does. One reason why this might be the case is because understanding is such a nebulous concept – we can tell students can read something if they can read it to us, but we can only really determine whether they understand it fully with some much more in-depth work.
CARS & STARS Online is a digital reading program designed to turn every student into a proficient and capable reader, with advanced levels of reading comprehension.
The core reading strategies that underpin the entirety of the CARS & STARS Online digital reading comprehension program form an underlying instructional framework that recurs throughout every level and provides consistency of understanding and instruction for students and teachers alike.
The twelve reading strategies progress from simpler, lower-order thinking skills such as Finding the Main Idea and Recalling Facts and Details to more complex, higher-order concepts such as Identifying Author’s Purpose and Summarising. Initial questions determine students’ mastery of the text at a literal level, while later questions build on this understanding to get to the heart of their conceptual understanding. In this way, in every reading passage across every reading level, students are being asked to perform the same essential tasks – with their difficulty and complexity increasing as the student progresses through the reading levels.
These research-proven strategies, taken together, offer a complete recipe for increased student awareness of textual features and concepts, and provide a direct and understandable pathway to improving reading comprehension for each and every student.
And now, onto our main strategy for this episode: Recognising Cause and Effect!
The ability to recognise cause and effect is one of the most important and fundamental skills required to make meaning from text read and to elevate understanding from mere rote repetition of words to actual comprehension.
Something happens, and that causes something else to happen. The existence of an action or event causes or precipitates an effect, the direct or indirect result of the original cause. It sounds pretty simple, put like this, but can you imagine how much more difficult it is to understand a passage or story when you don’t understand the nature of cause and effect occurring within them? Without this vital concept events take place unmoored from reason or consequence, and stories are rendered unintelligible for the reader who has no idea what is going on, and why it is happening.
In order to truly understand what is happening in a story it is absolutely integral to be able to understand why something is happening. For this reason, Recognising Cause and Effect is one of the bedrock strategies featured in CARS & STARS Online, and recurs throughout every level of the program.
Questions about Cause and Effect ask students to drill down into the events of a story or passage and ascertain not just what has happened within it but why things have occurred the way they have. In the earlier levels of the program the relationship between cause and effect is generally a direct and visible one – this happened, which caused this to happen – whereas at the higher levels cause and effect may be slightly more indirect and oblique, with the relationship not stated outright in the text but requiring more advanced textual analysis skills to determine.
Recognising Cause and Effect is an important element not just in reading comprehension but, in a broader sense, a vital life skill for making sense of the world, and for this reason it is a pivotal part of the 12 reading strategies that underpin CARS & STARS Online.
Here are some tips for Recognising Cause and Effect in any text.
To find an effect, look for a result, or something that happened. Ask yourself, “What happened?”
To find a cause, look for a reason something happened. Ask yourself, “Why did it happen?”
Look for the clue words so, since, as a result and because.
Now that we’ve talked about what this strategy is and how it works, let’s have a go at Recognising Cause and Effect in a passage ourselves: and answering questions the way students do in CARS & STARS Online!
First, I’ll read the passage:
The Vikings were skilled warriors and sailors who ruled over much of Europe long ago. The period that began around 860 A.D. is now referred to as the Golden Age of the Vikings. During that time, the population of Vikings began to grow. The climate of northern Europe was improving, so people were able to grow more food. The use of iron also made it possible to farm more effectively. The food supply increased, and people were able to eat better. Because they were healthier, the Vikings were able to live longer and have more children.
What caused the Vikings to become healthier?
Is the answer:
Their population began to grow.
They began to live longer lives.
Their food supply increased.
Or: The Golden Age had begun.
The correct answer here was: Their food supply increased.
This answer is correct because the increase in the food supply caused the Vikings to become healthier. According to the passage, “The food supply increased, and people were able to eat better.”
Which sentence contained an example of cause and effect?
Was it:
The period that began around 860 A.D. is now referred to as the Golden Age of the Vikings.
Because they were healthier, the Vikings were able to live longer and have more children.
The Vikings were skilled warriors and sailors who ruled over much of Europe long ago.
Or: During that time, the population of Vikings began to grow.
The correct answer here was: Because they were healthier, the Vikings were able to live longer and have more children.
This answer is correct because it points out something that happened (the Vikings were able to live longer and have more children) and why (because they were healthier).
Recognising Cause and Effect is such an important reading strategy, and so central to being a good reader, that it features in every one of the eight main reading levels of the CARS & STARS Online program.
At times like this the connection between school and home is more important than ever. For one thing, school closures and uncertainty around student attendance mean that communication between parents and teachers – and between parents, teachers and students – is paramount. Gone, for the moment, are the certainties of routines of the past. Parents need to be aware of what is going on with their child’s education, just as teachers need to be aware of how students are faring.
While this presents new and difficult challenges for everybody, there is one area where parents can be involved and kept constantly up to date on their child’s progress and instruction, without needing to directly contact their teacher or even rely on information from the student themselves.
CARS & STARS Online is a digital reading comprehension program based around the repeated application of twelve core reading strategies to make students better readers who can analyse and interpret any text at a high level of understanding. The multi-level program is designed to be entirely paper-free, with all student answers being entered directly into the software, and results being instantly recorded and corrected automatically, requiring no teacher marking.
A CARS & STARS Online parent account means parents can keep on top of their child’s reading progress instantly, from any device. It’s just like having full access to their classroom teacher at any time, because parents can look directly at what their child is doing and see constant updates on their results and progress.
Gone are the days where parents might have to wait months for a scheduled parent–teacher meeting to find out just how their child is progressing. With CARS & STARS Online, they have access to the same in-depth, instant and targeted information as the classroom teacher does. Learning to read is one of the most important life skills there is, and in these unprecedented times parents can be more informed than ever about their children’s progress with CARS & STARS Online.
If you are interested in learning more about the CARS & STARS Online subscriptions and how they can help children to achieve better results, then sign up for a free trial to be an integral part of your child’s reading success.
If you have missed out our previous episode, please click here. The next episode will be focused on the fifth reading strategy – Comparing and Contrasting.
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See you in the next episode, and thanks for listening!
