Write different effects on strips of paper, fold them in half and place them in a paper bag. Use effects that your students are likely to have experience with, such as "she was late" or "his toy broke." Ask a student to pull one out of the bag and tape it to the board. Have students brainstorm possible causes, such as "she was late because she couldn't find her backpack" or "she got lost." Write down all of the proposed causes and discuss which ones are more likely and why. Save the remaining "effects" to use later in the day or week. Frequent, brief exposures are often more effective than a longer lesson.
Divide your students into small groups. Provide each team with a list of statements, such as "you didn't do your homework," or "you overslept." Challenge each team to choose one statement and write a chain of events story line. If students get stuck, prompt them to continue with something such as, "and then what happened." Encourage the teams to come up with at least five or six events. If students finish early, or if teams are enjoying the activity, offer extra credit for expanding each event into a paragraph or drawing a picture to go with it. Reinforce that each event should be an "effect" of the previous event, so that the middle events are both a "cause" and an "effect."
Use stories from your classroom anthology or reading group books to find cause and effect patterns in the plot. Discuss the book's ending and work with your students to identify some primary causes. Remind your students that these may or may not be explicitly stated. If your students appear to be struggling with the concept, consider reading some of Aesop's fables or simple cause and effect books such as Laura Numeroff's "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."
Many classroom science projects illustrate cause and effect. Incorporate a discussion of cause and effect into all of your science lessons. Even descriptive lessons, such as a unit on frogs, can lead to a cause and effect discussion. Consider exploring what happens to frogs when water or food is scarce. Look especially beyond the obvious physical effects to reproduction and the effects of a smaller frog population on plants and other animals in the ecosystem.