Observations of Student Learning
Overall, my students seemed to have an emerging but not yet deep understanding of cause and effect. This is not totally surprising given that on the day that I taught my lesson my students had only just been introduced to cause and effect the day before. Their conceptual understanding was strongest—they seemed to understand the relationship between cause and effect. This is evident in the fact that most of them were able to identify either cause or effect when one or the other was provided and when scaffolding and guiding questions were provided. On the other hand, they still appeared to be unfamiliar with the vocabulary, the words 'cause' and 'effect'. They were generally unable to answer questions like, “What was the cause?” or, “What was the effect?” when these questions were stated on their own. My students' responses to these questions made it seem like they confuse the meaning of the words even though they understand that one happens as a result of the other. However, when either the cause or the effect was identified and I provided follow-up questions that asked the same thing in a different way, they were then able to provide answers that demonstrated an understanding of the bigger idea.
The following is a discussion of their understanding of each of the three instances of cause and effect in the story.
The following is a discussion of their understanding of each of the three instances of cause and effect in the story.
Cause and Effect #1
When we reached the first instance of cause and effect in Strega Nona I identified the cause (Strega Nona sang a song and blew three kisses) and asked the students a series of questions to see if they could identify the effect. The following is a clip of the beginning of this exercise.
The first student, Latif, said, “the soup was gone.” At the time I was confused by his response and did not know how to make sense of it. I wish that I had prompted him to explain further by saying something like, “I’d like you to say more. What do you mean by ‘the soup was gone’?” After examining this video and the page in the story on which we were focusing our conversation about cause and effect, I think I now understand what he meant. I believe that he was noticing the part of the illustration in the bottom right corner of the page where, as Strega Nona finishes blowing her three kisses, suddenly her pasta pot appears to be empty. Looking at this illustration now I find it quite confusing. The text implies that Strega Nona’s song and three kisses make the pot stop cooking pasta, but say nothing about making the pasta vanish. Latif did something that he has learned good readers do, and that is to use the pictures to help you understand what it happening in this story. His appropriate use of this reading strategy lead him to conclude that the effect of Strega Nona singing the song and blowing three kisses was that the soup [pasta] was gone. He did in fact accurately name the effect that he saw, which tells me that he understands the concept of cause and effect. That being said, he needed me to ask a series of scaffolding questions, such as “Who can tell me—what was the effect? Because she sang the song and blew three kisses, what happened? What was the effect?” and “After she sang the song and blew three kisses, what happened?”
|
The next student, Darrian, did correctly identify the effect that I had in mind when I planned this lesson and anticipated their responses. The following is a clip of his response to my questioning.
I tried to build on Latif’s answer by asking another scaffolding question to the group, saying, “She sang the song and she blew the kisses so the pot would……” Darrian’s answer was “so that the pot would not overflow.” This answer demonstrated that he understood the concept of cause and effect and that he understood the meaning of the “expensive” word that I had identified at the beginning of the lesson (“overflow’). Nonetheless, by the time he answered this question he had heard a number of scaffolding questions and responses from other students.
Cause and Effect #2
The second instance of cause and effect was that Big Anthony sang the song but forgot to blow three kisses, so the pot overflowed with pasta. In my original lesson plan this was intended to be the “We Do” portion, so I provided the cause and asked them for the effect. The following is a video clip of their response.
In this clip Alic’seeya correctly identified the effect and used the “expensive” word (overflow). I had provided appropriate scaffolding by supplying the cause and asking not only, “What was the effect?” but also, “What happened because he forgot the kisses?”. As I reflect on it now, I wish that I had responded to her answer differently. Instead of asking the rest of the group to give me a thumbs up if they agreed, I would ask one particular student whether he/she agreed or disagreed. This would have allowed me to remain neutral in my question (as opposed to implying through my tone, the way I did, that she was correct), and it would have generated more student discourse.
Cause & Effect #3
The third and last example of cause and effect was that because Big Anthony did not listen to Strega Nona, he was punished by having to eat all of the pasta. The video cut out here because something tipped the camera over but the audio continued to work, so below is a transcript of how the conversation went. (T-Teacher, Me)
T- This is a little bit of a trickier one so we all need to think about it together. He didn’t listen, so he was punished. What was the cause, Armani?
Armani—The cause was he had to eat all the pasta. T-What do you guys think? Was that the cause--was that why? Or was that the effect—was that what happened? What do you think, Alic’seeya? Alic’seeya—The effect. T-Yeah, it was the effect, it’s what happened. So I’m going to write that here in ‘Effect.’ We’re going to write the effect first this time. So what am I writing, Alic’seeya? ‘He had to…’ ” Alic-seeya- Eat all the pasta. [T writes 'he had to eat all the pasta'] T-So the effect was that he had to eat all the pasta. Why did he have to eat all the pasta? What was the cause? Jayden? Jayden- He was punished. T-OK, that was his punishment, wasn’t it? So we could also write “he was punished” under effect, because that’s another effect. [T writes 'he was punished'] But why was he punished? Darrian? Darrian—He was punished because he almost made the people die in the town when they were covered up in pasta. Each student’s response tells me something about his/her understanding. Armani’s answer that to my question “What was the cause?” was “He had to eat all the pasta.” Here, she actually identified the effect, not the cause. Her answer was not wildly off-base, as it still pertained to critical and relevant information from the text, but she did not correctly identify the cause. My sense is that she simply confused the vocabulary terms ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. The question that I asked her provided very little scaffolding—I did not follow up with re-phrased questions that highlighted the meaning of the word ‘cause’. Instead, I summarized the situation by saying “He didn’t listen so he was punished.” And then simply asked, “What was the cause?” Armani seemed to understand the relationship between the cause and effect but needed some more help in figuring out which was the cause.
Alic’seeya correctly identified that Armani’s answer was the effect and not the cause. However, I am not convinced that Alic’seeya truly understood what she was saying. The way that I asked the question made it seem like I was looking for someone to say, “the effect.” I think that it’s quite possible that Alic’seeya read my tone and my body language to figure out that I was hoping she would say ‘the effect.’ I wish that I had found a different way of asking the question, or that I had asked Alic’seeya to explain how she knew that it was the effect. While initially I thought that Jayden’s answer indicated a lack of understanding, after having watched the video I have changed my mind. When I asked, “Why did he have to eat all the pasta? What was the cause?” Jayden responded, “He was punished.” In the moment, I saw that as being another example of, or another way of wording, the effect that we had already listed (“He had to eat all the pasta.”) I figured that the punishment was that he had to eat all the pasta. However, I now recognize that perhaps in Jayden’s mind the effect of being punished was that Big Anthony had to eat all the pasta. In this case, Big Anthony’s punishment would in fact be a cause. Darrian identified the cause that I had in mind by stating that Big Anthony was punished because he made the pasta overflow into the town and put the townspeople in danger. By the time he answered, Darrian had heard many of my questions and many of the responses of his classmates. He had been provided with a lot of scaffolding. |
Observer Notes
These notes were taken by my Penn Mentor.
These notes were taken by my grade partner.