Virginia SOL 4.RI.3.C
The Standard
Describe the relationships between a series of historical events, scientific concepts, or steps in technical procedures using words that pertain to comparison, sequence, or cause and effect.
Virginia Standards of Learning for English · Integration of Concepts
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students trace links among events, scientific ideas, or steps in a process. They explain those links with clear comparison, order, or cause-and-effect words.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students accurately explain how events, ideas, or steps connect. They support the explanation with text details and use words such as similarly, next, because, and therefore correctly.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may list details without explaining how they connect. They may confuse what happened first with what caused an event, or use transition words that do not fit the relationship.
How to Assess It
- Give students a short passage about how erosion forms a canyon. Ask, “How does moving water change the canyon? Use because, then, and as a result.”
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs shuffled cards showing a plant’s life cycle; students order them and add arrows labeled first, next, because, and therefore.
Ask students to write how two events were alike and how the first affected the second, using evidence from a shared text.
Play Connection Sort: students place sentence cards under comparison, sequence, or cause and effect, then explain one choice.
Have students read school fire-drill directions and explain why each step follows the one before it.
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Printable 4.RI.3.C Worksheet
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Related Standards
- 5.RI.1.B
Summarize events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in historical, scientific, or technical texts, including what happened, how, and why.
- 5.RI.3.C
Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text...
- 3.RI.3.C
Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text.
- 3.RI.1.B
Summarize texts using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause and effect, referring to historical events, scientific ideas, or steps in technical pr...
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