Glue Words (Transitions)

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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.

  • After…
  • After that…
  • Afterward…
  • At first…
  • At the same time…
  • A moment later..
  • Before…
  • Before I knew it…
  • During…
  • Earlier…
  • Finally…
  • First…
  • For now…
  • For the time being…
  • In the blink of an eye…
  • In the meantime…
  • In time…
  • In turn…
  • Just as I realized…
  • Later…
  • Later on…
  • Meanwhile…
  • Next…
  • Now last…
  • Often…
  • Second…
  • Simultaneously…
  • Sometimes…
  • Soon…
  • Suddenly…
  • The next step…
  • The next thing I knew…
  • Then …
  • Third…
  • While…

For an extensive list of transitional words and phrases, go to the following website:
Study Guides and Strategies

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.
 

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