STEM Practice (Cause and Effect)
STEM Practice (Cause and Effect)
Certain parts of the ELPAC may include images, passages, or listening clips that require students to understand or explain STEM principles. Common concepts could include the water cycle, food webs, simple machines, photosynthesis, ecosystems, forces and motion, or the states of matter, essentially anything a student might encounter in a science or math class.
I highly recommend probing and exploring some of the science YouTube channels found here.
There are also amazing graphs and articles here, at Science Journal for Kids. I highly recommend that you collaborate and coordinate with respective science teachers on campus, too.
More science Diagrams can be found at Science A-Z.
SAP is a great tool to revisit here. Why reinvent the wheel? The framework gives students a familiar structure to fall back on, even when the content feels unfamiliar.
Subject — What is being shown or described?
Action — This is the big one. What is happening, and in what order? What causes change?
Point — What principle is on display? What is the takeaway?
The key difference with STEM material is the emphasis on cause and effect as a language function. Students need extra support framing their answers around causality — not just describing what they see, but explaining why it happens.
Subject — What is the image, passage, or clip about?
This shows/describes...
The topic of this passage is...
This is about...
Action — What is happening? What causes the change?
First... then... finally...
When ___ happens, it causes...
As a result of ___,...
Because of ___, the ___ changes/increases/decreases...
This leads to...
Point — What principle or concept is being demonstrated?
This shows that when ___, then ___...
The main idea is that ___ causes ___...
This demonstrates that...
The principle on display is...
This passage is about the water cycle. First, the sun heats the water, which causes it to turn into vapor and rise into the air. Then, the vapor cools and forms clouds. When the clouds get heavy, water falls back down as rain or snow. This shows that heat causes water to change and move in a cycle.
This diagram is about a food web. When there are more deer, it causes the plants to decrease because the deer eat them. As a result, wolves have more food, so their population goes up. This shows that when one animal changes, it causes a chain reaction for the other animals.
This image is about how plants make food. Plants take in sunlight, water, and air. Because of this, the plant is able to grow and survive. This shows that without sunlight, plants cannot make the energy they need.
This shows a ramp. When something heavy is pushed up a ramp instead of lifted straight up, it becomes easier to move. As a result, less force is needed to get it to the top. This shows that a ramp makes it easier to move heavy things by spreading the work over a longer distance.