Relationships Between Ideas and Concepts

1. Show the five cards with an everyday example each: Rain causes puddles. A ladder enables you to reach the shelf. A lock prevents the door opening. Breakfast precedes lunch. A robin is an example of a bird.
2. Ask pairs to put the four linking cards in order from claims the most to claims the least. Expected: causes, enables, prevents (all strong), then precedes — it says only that one came first.
3. Ask: does breakfast cause lunch? No. That is the whole lesson in one question.

1. Display the text. (1) Before 1820, Millbrook's mills were powered by the river, and in dry summers the wheels slowed or stopped. (2) In 1820 a canal opened, linking Millbrook to coal mines twenty miles north. Coal that had come by cart now came by barge at a quarter of the price. Cheap coal made it possible for mill owners to install steam engines, which ran whatever the river did. (3) Between 1820 and 1850, the town's population doubled. (4) Each January the canal froze, and the ice stopped the barges for weeks at a time. (5) In 1852 a railway reached Millbrook. Because trains were faster and never froze, most coal soon came by rail, and canal traffic fell by half within ten years.
2. Take the canal and the population. Ask which card fits. Most will say causes. Ask for the words. Paragraph 3 gives dates and nothing else — no "because," no "so." The card the text supports is precedes.
3. Take the railway and canal traffic. Quote "Because trains were faster and never froze" (para. 5). Here causes is supported, and choosing precedes would throw that information away.
4. Take cheap coal and the steam engines. Quote "made it possible" (para. 2). That is enables: the coal made engines possible; it did not force owners to buy them.
5. Take the ice and the barges: "the ice stopped the barges" (para. 4) — prevents.
6. Write the rule: Choose the strongest card the text's own words support — no stronger, no weaker.

“The text says the canal opened and then the town grew. Does it say the canal made the town grow? Show me the word. If you cannot point to it, you supplied it.”

1. Pairs choose a card and quote the signal words for four pairs: (a) the river and the mills; (b) dry summers and the mill wheels; (c) steam engines and dry summers stopping work; (d) the canal and the population.
2. Expected: (a) enables — "powered by the river"; (b) causes — "in dry summers the wheels slowed or stopped" (the river powered them, so low water slowed them); (c) prevents — the engines "ran whatever the river did"; (d) precedes only.
3. For (d), each pair writes one sentence on what extra information would let them choose causes. A good answer: a sentence saying people moved to Millbrook to work in the new steam mills.
4. Share answers to (c). Some pairs will argue the text never says "prevent"; accept it when they can quote "ran whatever the river did" and explain that the engines kept working when the river could not.

“I will take any card you can defend with the text's words. I will not take a card you can only defend with what you know about canals.”

1. Students complete the printable relationships page alone. The passage is on the sheet.
2. Every answer needs a card and a quotation; mark any "causes" with no quoted signal word for a conversation.

1. Ask: which relationship in the Millbrook text was most tempting to overclaim? Take the canal and the population, and the reason: dates are not a "because."