Mackenzie Worn

Academic Preparation 4
24 October 2016
Lesson Plan for week 7 (October 20, 2016)
Audience:

College-age students, 18+

12 students, half with an L1 of Arabic and half with an L1 of Chinese
Evenly mixed gender
All high-intermediate level with varying ranges of proficiency

Background: Students have learned two different types of essays thus far; summary/response
and cause/effect. Variety of writing and reading skills have been covered and can be found in the
next topic point below.
What has been covered so far: Writing skills such as brainstorming, outlining, summarizing
(including paraphrasing and citing sources), and revising have been taught. Reading skills such
as identifying a thesis, main idea, and locating details. Three readings have been done
previously to this lesson in which students demonstrated the above skills.
Course Objectives: General Objectives, can be found on course syllabus
Lesson Objectives:

SWBAT define transitions (vocabulary) (Objective 1)

SWBAT distinguish causal transitions in a sentence (functional)
o From pre-made sentences (Objective 2) and sentences within their One World:
One Culture passage (Objective 3)
SWBAT create sentences using causal transitions (functional) (Objective 4)
SWBAT create test-like comprehension questions according to the One World: One
Culture? reading (functional) (Objective 5)

Materials:

White board/markers
Transitions worksheet
Final Draft textbook
One World: One Culture?

Overview of Procedures:

Warm-up
Introduction to transitions
Transitions practice

Reading comprehension activity

Detailed Procedure:
8:00am- 8:05: Warm-up
Greet students as they walk in and have them sit with their same groups as Tuesday. The
instructor will write the groups on the board in case students forget which group they were in.
The instructor will remind the students that their outline for their cause/effect essay is due by
midnight tonight (10/20) and quickly go over the guidelines posted to CANVAS.
8:05- 820: Introduction to Transitions
Students will be learning about transitions in todays lesson with a main focus on causal
transitions which they will utilize in their upcoming essays. The instructor has prepared an
informational worksheet that will be distributed to the students. Prior to giving out the
worksheet the instructor will ask they know what a transition is? Along with any examples
they can think of. After a short discussion the class will go over the worksheet as a whole. The
instructor will ask a (different) student to read each bulleted point to the class along with some
examples that are provided (see below for worksheet example) (Objective 1). Students will then
work with their group by thinking of other clausal transitions; they may use their textbook as a
reference. The class will compile a list on the board for later use. Students will come to the
board and add their words/phrases.
8:20-8:50: Transition practice
After students have compiled a list of transitions on the board they will complete the 8
sentences created by the instructor on their provided worksheet; this will be done alone
(Objective 2). The instructor will go over the answers by going around the room and asking each
student to read a sentence and providing the answer. Following this practice; students will create
their own sentences using proper causal transitions (Objective 4). They may work with their
group and reference their worksheet and/or the list of words on the board for reference. Each
student will choose 1 sentence to write on the board and as a class locate the transitions used in
each sentence. Finally, the students will be asked to go back to their reading from the previous
class, One World: One Culture? and underline causal transitions (Objective 3) using previously
learned scanning skills. The class will briefly discuss their findings before moving onto their
next activity.
8:50-9:15: One World: One Culture? comprehension activity
The students will stay in their assigned groups from the beginning of class for this
activity. The previous class students read the passage in its entirety; today the instructor will
assign each group to a different portion of the reading. Each group will read their one portion
and become experts on that part. The students will then create at least 5 test-like questions
in the forms of short answer, matching/fill- in- the blank (for vocabulary check), or multiple
choice along with an answer key according to their assigned part of the text (Objective 5).
Depending how much time is left the students will either swap their questions with another group

who did not read their section or save their questions for Monday. Since the students have
already read the entire passage but will not be experts on the section in which they are
answering the questions they may have to go back and review that section. This will allow for an
overall understanding of the passage.
Anticipated Problem: Students will already be familiar with and know how to use causal
transitions in which this activity could be redundant and boring however, according to their
diagnostic I do not believe this will be the case. Even if it is, a topic like transitions is always
good to review since I have not seen it done in any of their writing yet.
Reflection: As predicted my students did know some transitional words/phrases but I do not
think they understood the importance or how to use them. The activities I chose went really
smoothly except for one part in which they had to scan the text (read in the previous class) and
find both causal and other transitions. For some of the transitions they found I had to also
double-check if it was a transition and if it was being used as one in the sentence or not. Luckily,
I had pull up MSUs transitions page for my students (and myself) to reference so we could
search as a class and determine if it was in fact a transition or not. I also liked how I was able to
connect the transitions lesson with their previous reading lesson, so I did not seem as if I was just
throwing a random lesson/activity into the class this day.

Transitions
Transitions are:
Words or phrases used to connect one idea to the next
Used to help reader move from one idea to another
Shows relationship with a paragraph or sentence between main idea and supporting
details
There are different types of transitional words and phrases; we will focus on causal
transitions
A causal transition is: a word or phrases that signal (or show) cause and effect
Some examples include:
Because of (the fact)
Accordingly
Since
Due to (the fact)
Can you think of any others?? List them below. Reference page 93 in Final Draft for more
examples.

When and where is a transitional word or phrase used?

In the beginning OR middle of a sentence
o Example: In addition to the bad weather, their car also broke down.
At the beginning OR end of a paragraph

Circle the correct transitional word or phrase.

1. Freshmen (students in their first year of college) are given maps so that they will not get
lost.
2. She had to stay in bed all week due to the fact that she was sick.
3. He was absent over 50% of the time and missed the final exam, therefore, he failed the
course.
4. As a result of high unemployment, there has been an increase in homeless people.
5. It is raining today thus we are not going to the beach.
6. I was late to school because of heavy traffic.
7. Since it is warm outside we decided to go to the beach.
8. Flexible workers find themselves in great demand, and consequently earn higher salaries.
Create 3 sentences of your own using causal transitions.
1.

2.

3.

Use your Scanning skills to identify causal transitions (or other transitions) you find in One
World: One Culture? Write them here: