Transition Words

So this week we focused on how to use transition words effectively to organize our writing. To start off the week, we looked at a piece of writing, and I asked the students to share any words in the piece that they thought helped to organize it and put it in order.

On Tuesday we created this transition words pencils. The purple is in Spanish and the green in English. They each have two sides- one (pictured on the Spanish pencil) provides the students with different words they can use at the beginning, middle or end of their stories. The other (pictured on English pencil) are other examples of transition words that students may find useful. The students keep these pencils in their Writer's Workshop folders and can pull them out whenever they need!

Throughout the week I utilized pieces of student writing as examples and we worked together (using our nifty pencils) to add transition words to enhance the piece.

On Friday, we read the story "Si le das un pastelito a un gato" by Laura Numeroff. All of her books work great for transition words- she uses so many examples! I gave each student a post-it note and asked them to listen for transition words that the author uses in her writing and jot them down as I read. Afterword we shared the examples we had found as well as discussed how using these words helped the author to better organize her writing. 

Here is an example of some of their post-its. (Sorry the dark purple wasn't real conducive to a photo.)

Look forward to a post soon about how I do Writer's Workshop in my classroom. (As soon as I can get a grasp on this whole embedding Google Docs business.)

Have a great Monday!