Glue Words (Transitions)
Writing Trait/Strategy:
word choice; organization; revision
Mentor Text Suggestions:
- Cow by Jules Older
- One Dark Night by Lisa Wheeler
- When a Monster is Born by Sean Taylor
- The Other Dog by Madeline L’Engle
Description:
Do you have students who begin every sentence with “And then…” or students who begin every sentence the same way as this student did?
These are writers who need a mini-lesson on transition words or “glue words”—those words and phrases that hold a piece together and help the reader navigate smoothly through the text. In Super Story-Writing Strategies and Activities, Barbara Mariconda calls these transitions “red flags” that tell the reader that there is a shift in the plot.
Have students begin a list of “glue word and phrases” like the one below to which they can refer when they are writing. When I encounter a child during a writing conference who seems to use the same transitional words repeatedly, we circle those words, refer to our chart, and find some suitable replacements.
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For an extensive list of transitional words and phrases, go to the following website:
Try retyping a portion of a published text omitting the transition words. Copy onto a transparency and work together to fill in the transitions. Examine the original text to see how the class transitions compare with the author’s.
Tags: Mentor Texts, Organization Trait, Six-Trait Writing, Writing Minilessons