Looking for Connections between Ideas
Purpose: This exercise aims to teach students how to construct effective transitions in their writing and look for connections between ideas where a natural link might not be obvious.
Description: Transitions asks students to link unrelated ideas and discovery new and creative ways of tying together concepts in their writings.
Suggested Time: About 20 minutes
Procedure:
Tell them to divide a sheet of paper in half, making two columns. In the left column, have them list what they like about Tallahassee. In the right column, what they dislike. Give them time to make a fairly decent sized list, at least seven or eight in each column. I write my own list on the board.
Have them randomly circle two ideas in the like column, then two ideas in the dislike column.
Have them number these four ideas, starting with a like, then a dislike, then back to a like again. e.g. 1) rainbows 2) bloody noses 3) warm soup 4) pop quizzes
Now begin a discussion about transitions. Ask them if they understand what teachers mean by rough transitions. I explain that the difficulty often arises in people's inability to see the connections between ideas, and one way to get better at that is to practice looking for those connections between ideas which don't seem naturally related.
Tell them to write, to move from subject one to two to three to four. I explain that a bad transition is one which just jumps suddenly from one idea to another with no idea logically connecting the two. It will probably also be beneficial to explain that good transitions also do not stray too far from the main idea of the writing (i.e. don't just ramble).
(optional) When they have worked on this for a while, have some people read their pieces out loud. The first people done will probably be the ramblers. Discuss what could be done to tie all of their ideas together.
They could reproduce this same activity using a brief outline of their essay's shifting paragraph topics. How do they create similarly effective transitions?