Three Magic Words - because, but, so
“Because, but, so.” I first heard those words uttered by a very well informed colleague advising a prep teacher on how to give his students a great foundation to their writing skills. It seemed so simple.
A few weeks later, the prep teacher reported that his students were blitzing it in their writing lessons. They were experts at creating interesting sentences using the ‘because, but, so’ connectives. They had not only learned how to articulate and write an idea, but they had explored the meaning of each of these three magic words and had a better understanding of these pivotal connectives than I did. I think their definitions were something like “Because gives the reason, but is a difference and so gives the result.”
This was another one of my big Ah-Ha moments in teaching and I just had to know where to get more gold like this. The answer was in The Writing Revolution. I’d seen it referenced quite a bit on some of the Science of Reading Facebook pages I followed, so now it was time to buy it and find out what all the fuss was about.
I can now tell you that the fuss is warranted. I LOVE this book.
Sometimes we overlook the simple and dismiss their importance. This book provides a sequenced approach with all the information you need to explicitly teach students how to write great sentences, then builds up to paragraphs and finally essays. It covers you, no matter what grade level you are teaching.
I’ve used the because, but, so connectives in all sorts of ways. I’ve used them to summarise a story. Because is used to explain the what and why in the beginning of a story, But is used to explain the problem/complication, and So is used for the resolution. I guess it’s quite similar to the Somebody wanted, But, So, Then summary strategy, which is also great, but I like to add a final sentence stem of ‘In the end’.
Another activity I’ve done with these three magic words is to use other signal words to build student vocabulary. When doing a compare and contrast, I’ll introduce the word ‘however’ in place of the word ‘but’. I’ve used ‘as a result’ instead of ‘because’ when exploring cause and effect, and ‘so’ can be substituted for ‘consequently’ or ‘in the end’ for a sequence of events.
Because of the pressures of a crowded curriculum we rush past the fundamentals of writing and try to take shortcuts to reach the end product of writing a complete text. Then wonder why these students only have a basic grasp of what good or great writing looks like.
Here’s an idea: Let’s take a deep breath, take a step back and dedicate some time to teach them well.
It’s a simple activity that can really pack a punch because it encourages critical thinking, but it’s not just a writing task. It can also be used in any subject that requires some thought and synthesis of the content. So in the end, the students will be able to express themselves in a range of well constructed sentences.
References: The Writing Revolution, (Judith Hochman & Natalie Wexler)
