Cause and effect worksheets

Each click picks one of the 26 passages written for this grade. Every sheet comes with its answer key. You don't need to sign up.

A cause is why something happened. An effect is what happened because of it. Ask: what happened, and what made it happen?

Six grades, five different sets of passages: 5th and 6th grade share one. Print one here, or open a grade for examples and teaching notes.

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  1. 1st grade

    Examples and teaching notes

    First grade cause and effect worksheets pair short stories and simple science passages of about eighty words with four questions. Your child reads about something that happened, like a snowman melting on a warm day, and answers questions that ask why it happened or what happened because of it. The key gives the answer the passage states.

  2. 2nd grade

    Examples and teaching notes

    Cause and effect worksheets for second grade pair short passages with questions that ask why things happened. Every story and article turns on clear chains: a bumped jar spills, a spilled jar ruins a painting. Your child finds the why behind each what, with the answer key naming the cause the passage gives.

  3. 3rd grade Core grade

    Examples and teaching notes

    Each click picks one of the 26 passages written for this grade. Every sheet comes with its answer key. You don't need to sign up.

    Third grade cause and effect passages carry longer chains: one open gate leads to a goat, a garden, and a lost afternoon. Questions ask for causes, for effects, and for the links between them, and the wrong choices are true details that are NOT the cause, so real reading is required.

  4. 4th grade

    Examples and teaching notes

    Fourth grade passages include nonfiction where causes hide in the science: why bridges need gaps, why some forests regrow after fire. Your child untangles chains with several links and answers questions that reach across paragraphs, the same cause-effect reading that social studies and science books demand.

  5. 5th grade

    Examples and teaching notes

    Fifth grade cause and effect worksheets follow chains of three to five links, in passages like the Dust Bowl or a chess club that loses its room. Questions ask about the links in the middle, not just the first and last, and the signal words go past because and so to as a result, due to and consequently.

  6. 6th grade

    Examples and teaching notes

    Sixth grade cause and effect worksheets ask how causes work together. A dust storm needs plowed soil and a drought, and a club can lose its room for two reasons at once. Questions ask which causes combined and which listed event caused nothing. Some ask what would have changed if one link had never happened.

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