This lesson plan focuses on teaching students to use transitional words and phrases to improve the flow and connection between ideas in their writing. The lesson will include modeling identifying areas that need transitions and inserting appropriate transitions in an example text. Students will then practice applying this skill to their own narrative drafts, with the teacher providing conferencing and feedback. The goals are for students to learn to identify parts of their writing that require transitions and to insert suitable transitional words or phrases in those areas.

1. 1. Teaching Details
- Day #17 of Unit
- Transitions
2. Unit Goals
RL.7.10. By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories,
dramas, and poems, in the grades 6-8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding
as needed at the high end of the range.
W.7.3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective
technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.
(c) Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal
shifts from one time frame or setting to another.
3. Lesson Objectives & Assessments
Formative Assessments
Objectives Reaching Meeting Exceeding
SWBAT Identify
areas of their writing
that require a
transitional word or
phrase.
SWBAT Insert
appropriate
transitional words or
phrases in areas that
require it.
4. Resources
o Projector/Projector Screen
o Teacher Computer
o Elmo
o Independent Reading Book
o LA Handbook
o Written Draft
o Loose Leaf paper for notes
5. Lesson Sequence
o Opening (5 minutes)
Students will enter the classroom, daily agenda will be on the board,
announcements will be discussed, homework will be explained, and
PowerPoint of the days preparations on the projector
Section Two will watch morning announcements (5 minutes)
o Independent Reading (25 minutes)
Typed Draft #3 check-in
During this time, I will be continuing my one-on-one conferences of their
drafts that I started last week.

2. Book Check-in
o Connection to Prior Knowledge (5 minutes)
When the students were drafting their first drafts a lot of students
were getting stuck because they knew they were to draft a short story but
they didn’t know how smoothly transition from one plot point to another
without explaining everything that happened. This lesson will help those
students whose narratives are stretched too thin because they wanted to
explain everything that happened to their characters. We have spent the
past two weeks revising in parts and this lesson will smooth out the
choppiness that was created by putting the pieces of the story together at
different points.
In both academic writing and professional writing, your goal is to
convey information clearly and concisely, if not to convert the reader to
your way of thinking. Transitions help you to achieve these goals by
establishing logical connections between sentences, paragraphs, and
sections of your papers. In other words, transitions tell readers what to do
with the information you present to them. Whether single words, quick
phrases or full sentences, they function as signs for readers that tell them
how to think about, organize, and react to old and new ideas as they read
through what you have written.
o Minilesson/Learning Objective (15 minutes) – Writers use transitional words or
phrases to glue the parts of our story together.
Modeling
We will have a whole class discussion about transition
words and phrases. We have not covered this topic before in the
class, so I want to anchor their learning around a sheet of notes on
transitions. They will also be given an example sheet of possible
transitional words and phrases.
Guided Practice
The students will be given an example of writing on the
Elmo that is choppy and has no transitions. I will model with a
think-aloud how a writer recognizes an area that needs a transition
and how to choose the right transition. The students will turn-and-
talk with the person next to them to decide on where to transition
next in the example text and what transition to use. We will share
out after the students have had time to talk.
o Independent Practice/Conferencing (15 Minutes)
The students will go back to their desks to work independently on
their drafts. They are to be doing just as we did with the practice piece of
writing and find places that seem choppy and require a transition. Then
they can go to the list of examples provided and identify a transition that
fits the situation. During this time, I will circulate the room checking for
understanding and formatively assessing the students.
o Report Out/Wrap Up/Share (5 minutes)
Share out sentences to which they added transition words or
phrases.