Cause and Effect Reading Skills Passage - Strange Allergy: Tick Bites and Meat

Maximize your instruction time by covering a lot with a little! Your students will love this article about how those creepy arachnids, ticks, can cause a red meat allergy. This is the perfect passage for teaching cause and effect, an introduction to allergies, arachnids, and many other topics. Students can interact with the text in several ways; you choose how and how much. Here is what's included:

• 482-word reading cause and effect passage that explores how a tick bite can cause a red meat allergy (includes color and black and white versions)
• Main idea and supporting detail graphic organizer
• Text structure question and graphic organizer sheet
• Fact and opinion sheet
• Questioning sheet to spur student questions and further research
• A word study sheet hones in on specific words (disease and ease) in the article and their latin roots.
• Answer sheets for relevant pages

Use one sheet to focus on a specific skill or use as a packet for self-guided close-reading. Either way, this passage will engage students and maximize instruction.

4th grade reading level, but appropriate for other grades, including middle school and beyond.

Keywords: ticks, arachnids, alpha-gal, allergy, allergies, bugs, cause and effect, main idea, supporting details, text structure, questioning, graphic organizers, fact and opinion, word study, science, health