Change, cause & effect
About
Standards

Introduction
Story - Narrative
Middle years and up
change
cause
effect
character growth
- Purpose
- Learn to write stories that hang together and result in a change in character or circumstances.
- Description
- Narratives are ultimately about creating chains of cause and effect. In this lesson we explore cause and effect from both a syntax and a story point of view. We look at what happens when cause and effect is broken, how connectors clarify cause and effect relationships, how context and description help readers infer cause and effect, and finally how all this combines to create change in characters and circumstances by the end of a story. For a checkpoint piece, students combine 3 of their responses to create a snapshot story arc. This lesson suits older middle-years and young adult students, and takes 2-3 hours to complete.