Cause and Consequence of Migration
LAUNCH Humanities · Autumn 1 · Week 2 · 40 minutes
Today at a Glance
◆ Supported
Six cards sorted and one cause matched.
▲ Standard
All cards sorted and matched, one located multi-cause explanation.
★ Stretch
The standard route plus a weighed judgement with a stated evidential limit.
Teacher Print Tools — Week 2
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
Arrival Task – Retrieving cause, order and evidence
A cause is a factor that helps explain why an event happened, and a list of factors becomes an explanation only when the relationships between them are stated and evidenced.
Consequences fall on the people who moved and on the places they moved to, and a source usually records one of these more fully than the other.
Arrival decision: Work from the supplied factor cards, or add one located in the approved pack; nobody will ask which.
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
Starter: Why is a list of true facts not yet an explanation?
Consider two answers to the question of why people came to Britain from the Caribbean after 1948.
Answer A: “There had been a war. Britain needed workers. The nationality law was passed. A ship sailed.”
Answer B: “Post-war Britain faced a labour shortage, so employers and the government invited workers from Commonwealth countries; the nationality law of 1948 confirmed their right to come and settle; and one consequence was that hospitals and transport services were staffed in part by Caribbean workers who formed lasting communities in British cities.”
Answer B is an explanation and Answer A is not, although every sentence in A is true, because B states the relationships between the factors with words such as so, confirmed and one consequence was, and each of those joining words is a claim that must be carried by a locator.
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
I Do: Three speeds of cause, one event, two kinds of consequence
The diagram above is a causal web rather than a chain: three causes of different speeds converge on one event, and two kinds of consequence diverge from it. The long-term cause is the post-war labour shortage, the short-term cause is the nationality law of 1948, and the trigger, drawn with a dashed border because it is the box most often asserted without evidence, is the advertisement of berths on a particular ship.
Watch the method: I take a factor card that says employers in Britain advertised for workers in Caribbean newspapers. I ask how long that condition had been building, and the answer is months rather than years or days, so I place it as a short-term cause; I then ask which event it helps explain, match it to 1948, and read its locator aloud. Speed first, then match, then locator, and only then the next card.
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
We Do: Sort three cards. Match one to its event.
Card 1: in August 1972 the ruler of Uganda ordered people of Asian heritage to leave the country within ninety days.
Card 2: many of the families expelled from Uganda held British passports issued under earlier nationality law.
Card 3: during the 1970s shops and businesses founded by families from Uganda opened in towns including Leicester.
Sort first: sort the three cards in the frame on your table as long-term cause, short-term cause, trigger or consequence, then match each to the 1972 event card; every table sorts at the same time, and only then do we compare.
Evidence check
Card 2 is where readings diverge: the passports were issued years before 1972, which makes them long-term, yet they became decisive only when the expulsion order came, so both readings are defensible if the relationship between passports and trigger is stated. A sort with a stated relationship is an explanation; a sort without one is a guess.
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
I Do: Weighing causes: push, pull and the scale of evidence
The diagram above sorts causes by direction, push factors arising in the place people left and pull factors arising in the place they reached, and beneath the two boxes it draws a scale on which the weight of any cause is measured not by how dramatic it sounds but by the number and quality of the locators that support it.
An explanation that fails the scale reads: “People came to Britain in 1948 because they wanted a better life.” The sentence may be true, but no card in the pack carries it, so it has no weight; the repair is to replace the unsupported motive with the located factors, which state what the evidence can carry.
Repairing it together: rewrite the sentence as “People came to Britain in 1948 because employers advertised work there and the nationality law confirmed their right to settle,” attaching the locator for each clause; the explanation now weighs exactly what the pack can support.
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
We Do: Match causes to consequences together
We build one explanation on the board before anyone writes: each learner records a single cause card on a whiteboard, marked push or pull and with its speed, and only when every board is raised do we compare and agree the explanation.
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
Independent Work — Your record: cause and consequence of migration
Produce one record from the supplied factor cards, or from those and one further located factor; both are complete answers.
◆ Supported
Sort six cards into cause and consequence and match one cause to its event; an adult may scribe your exact words, which remain yours.
▲ Standard
Sort all cards by speed and direction, match each cause to its event, and write one explanation joining two causes to a consequence with a locator for every clause.
★ Stretch
Complete the standard route, then weigh which cause carried most force for one event, defending the judgement by its locators and naming one evidential limit.
Check yourself: does every joining word in your explanation have a locator beside it?
Check yourself: have you separated consequences for people from consequences for places?
⏸ Pens down — quick partner check!
Half way through: stop, swap with a partner, and check one thing on the list above together. Then carry on.
WAGOLL — what a good one looks like
A finished explanation reads: a post-war labour shortage (long-term, locator) led employers to advertise for workers in the Caribbean (short-term, locator), and the nationality law of 1948 confirmed the right to settle (locator), so that several hundred passengers arrived on the Windrush in June 1948, one consequence being that hospitals and transport services were staffed in part by Caribbean workers (locator). Four joins, four locators, one explanation.
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
Lundy Loop — Your Voice in This Lesson
🚪 SPACE
Space ,
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
📣 VOICE
👥 AUDIENCE
⭐ INFLUENCE
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.
Exit Ticket — Audience receives; influence changes something
Read your explanation to a partner or an adult, who repeats the cause they heard in their own words.
If the listener heard a consequence where you meant a cause, change the joining word; the change is yours.
✅ Complete
Hand in your record and tick the learner confirmation on your sheet. That is the lesson done.
SPACE stays available, VOICE is received, AUDIENCE names back exactly and INFLUENCE changes one real next action.