Activities

1. Define and understand the use of transitional phrases and words.  
   
   
2. Recognize how writers use transitions to create cohesion and clarify relationships among claims, reasons, and evidence.

3. Determine effective transition phrases to use in writing.
   
   
4. Classify transition phrases depending on their meaning or purpose.

5. Develop sentences using the generative sentence approach to build stronger, cohesive sentences. 
   
   
6. Critique a written or spoken argumentative piece for words, phrases, and clauses that create cohesion and clarify the relationship among claims, reasons, and evidence.

Answer Key/Rubric

1. Student defines transitional words as words that connect thoughts.  Students recognize that although these words serve the same purpose, each transition word has subtle nuance and meaning.
   
   
2. Students will recognize transition words and phrases in a written argumentative/persuasive essay.  Students will evaluate the effectiveness of those words in creating cohesion among ideas.
   
   
3. Student will identify which transition phrases they are most likely to use.  Using a chart of transition phrases and words, students should look over the words and highlight which word/phrases they could incorporate into their writing.  A good source is http://www.smart-words.org/linking-words/linking-words.pdf .
   
   
4. Students will classify transition words by meaning.  Using a list such as this https://emedia.leeward.hawaii.edu/lrc/handouts/Revised_Transitional%20Words%20worksheet%2004%203%202007.pdf, students can cut up the words and then organize them into categories of meaning.
   
   
5. Student demonstrates an ability to build strong sentences using a strategy called “generative sentences.”  Teachers can instruct students to write a sentence of a certain word length incorporating each of the transition words.  Teachers can extend this to include new vocabulary words.  This works to develop varied sentence structure and more complex writing.
   
   
6. Student will demonstrate an understanding of how writers and speakers use transitions to build a cohesive argument.  Students can critique the argument looking for transitions and how those helped to build a stronger, more cohesive argument.