Systematic and Explicit Instruction on Using Transition Words in Complete Sentences

What are transition words?

Transition words help us keep our writing organized. They can put ideas and events in time order or order of importance. They can also show that we are comparing things. Transition words are a guide for the reader that helps them understand a piece of writing.

Here is a video to help your students understand transition words.

Example Sentences

After introducing transition words to your students, you will want to show them examples. When looking at example sentences, point out the capitalized first letter, spacing between words, and ending punctuation. Speaking of ending punctuation. I recommend sticking with periods until you can give a lesson on the other types of ending punctuation.

Transition Words that Tell Time Order

Transition Words that Tell Order of Importance

Transition Words That Compare and Contrast

This should be a quick part of the lesson. You can ask students what they notice but quickly point out the important parts of the sentence. In these sentences, you want students to notice that the transition words come at the beginning of sentences. Transitions words can come at any point in a sentence, but using them at the beginning is the easiest first step. When transition words come at the beginning of a sentence, we use a comma to separate them from the rest of the sentence. Your students might also notice that transition words can include adverbs and prepositions. They are correct. They may also point out that sometimes we use transition words, but a lot of the time we use transition phrases. This is also correct. Transition phrases aren’t a part of speech. They are a tool writers use to make their writing clear and easy to understand.

Transition Words Videos

We use transition words to connect ideas, so brainstorming transition words from a picture doesn’t make sense. Instead, you will show a short video, and have students talk through a piece of writing with transition words with a partner. You can collect ideas for a class writing sample on an anchor chart.

Transition Words that Tell Time Order

Transition Words that Tell Order of Importance

When you are using transition words to tell the order of importance, you will want to explain that order of importance is an opinion. Students may rank the same facts in a different order of importance.

Transition Words to Compare and Contrast

Printable Resources

These ideas will get you started teaching your transition words lessons, but we have printable resources that will make a huge difference. Luckily, my team at For the Love has you covered! You can get all of these resources to make planning and teaching a breeze!

Word List: A list of words for the lesson for when your mind goes blank while brainstorming.

Word Chart: A tool for students to organize words they will use to write sentences. Students record words from brainstorming on their word charts, so when they write sentences, they can focus their attention on the mechanics and syntax of the sentence instead of coming up with new ideas. Word charts are the perfect place to integrate social studies and science lessons into writing.

Example Sentences: A list of example sentences that fit the purpose of the lesson. You can use these to build anchor charts, differentiate instruction or practice for students, or clarify your own understanding of the topic.

Sentence Practice: Students will use the words from their word charts to write complete sentences. The sentence practice pages have more suggestion words as well as reminders about the mechanics of a complete sentence. Students who do not need the support of the handwriting lines can write on a piece of notebook paper, or you can give them the alternate writing paper. It does not have the specific lesson information on it.

You can get the lesson on nouns at Teachers Pay Teachers.

How to Teach Writing Complete Sentences