Image of a teen with a 3D printed hand, holding a ball
Shutterstock.com (background); Kelly Flood/Sumner County Schools, TN (Sergio Peralta)
Write Like a Pro,

How 3-D Printing Is Changing the World

From artificial limbs to pieces of cake, 3-D printers can create just about anything.

By Mackenzie Carro
From the October 2023 Issue

Learning Objective: to analyze how writers use transitions, then practice using transitions in a paragraph

Featured Skills: Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics,
Common Core Standards
  • Anchor Standards
    L.1, L.2
  • Grade 6
    L.6.2a
  • Grade 7
    L.7.2a
  • Grade 8
    L.8.2a
TEKS Standards
  • Grades 6, 7, 8
    2a, 2b, 2c

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Directions

  1. Read the article.
  2. Click on the phrases in blue to learn about one of the writer’s pro moves: using transition words and phrases.
  3. Take the Write Like a Pro Challenge below.

Kelly Flood/Sumner County Schools, TN

Sergio Peralta wears a prosthetic hand that students at his school made for him with a 3-D printer.

Sergio Peralta did everything with one hand. Born with a right hand that wasn’t fully formed, Sergio got used to doing most things—eating, tying his shoes, holding a water bottle—with his left. Then, last fall, when Sergio was 15, everything changed. A group of students at Sergio’s school in Hendersonville, Tennessee, offered to build him a prosthetic hand.

How does a group of teens go about constructing a hand from scratch? By using an extraordinary technology called 3-D printing.

Transforming Our World

Wladimir Bulgar/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

A 3-D printer in action

Unlike a printer that uses ink to print words and photos, a 3-D printer uses materials such as plastic, metal, or concrete to print three-dimensional objects. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you want to 3-D print a phone case. First, you send a digital design for the case to the printer. Next, the 3-D printer pushes melted plastic through a nozzle to create the bottom layer of the case. Then, when the plastic cools, the printer adds another layer—and then another and another, until the case is complete.

Today 3-D printers can make just about anything. NASA is 3-D printing parts for rockets. Chefs are 3-D printing food. Doctors are 3-D printing synthetic skin for burn victims.

Indeed, 3-D printers have the power to transform our world in all sorts of exciting ways. 3-D printers can create complex shapes—such as custom prostheses like Sergio’s hand—that many machines can’t. Doctors hope that one day, we may even be able to print human organs like hearts and livers.

Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters

Fancy a ride on a 3-D printed motorcycle?

That’s not all. These printers can also be used to reduce the materials, cost, and time needed to construct homes, schools, and other buildings.

In June 2021,  for instance, a 3-D printer helped build a school in Malawi, a country in southeast Africa, in just 15 hours. Before the school opened, some kids in the area had to walk miles to reach school. That’s a common problem in Malawi, which needs about 36,000 more classrooms to meet the needs of students. Building that many classrooms would ordinarily take 70 years, experts say. With the help of 3-D printers, the job could be done in less than a decade.

The Future of Printing

Jonathan Blutinger/Columbia Engineering

Would you eat this? It’s 3-D printed peanut butter cheesecake!

So why don’t we just 3-D print everything? For now, it’s still cheaper and more efficient to produce large quantities of items in factories.

There’s no doubt, though, that 3-D printers have already begun to change lives in powerful ways. Just ask Sergio, who uses his prosthetic hand to eat, play catch, and pick things up.

How else might 3-D printers change the world? We’ll just have to wait and see. 

Write Like a Pro Challenge

Compose a detailed note to a friend who is helping you plan a surprise birthday party. Your message should:

  • Explain what tasks your friend needs to accomplish.
  • Use transitions to help your friend understand the order in which these tasks should be done.   
  • Use a transition to emphasize any super-important information your friend needs to know.

This article was originally published in the October 2023 issue.

video (1)
Activities (2)
Reference
Skill-Building Activities
video (1)
Activities (2)
Reference
Skill-Building Activities
Step-by-Step Lesson Plan

Close Reading, Critical Thinking, Skill Building

Download the Lesson Plan

Table of Contents

1. Prepare to Read

2. Read and Discuss

3. Write

1. PREPARE TO READ (5 MINUTES)

Set a Purpose for Reading 

  • Direct students to the directions titled “Write Like a Pro” in the upper left-hand corner of page 30 or at the top of the digital story page. Read the directions aloud.

2. READ AND DISCUSS (25 MINUTES)

  • Have students work independently or with a partner to follow the directions and complete the activity. 
  • Optionally, before completing the Write Like a Pro Challenge, practice using transition words and phrases together using the task below:

Practice filling in the blanks in the paragraph below to build bridges between the ideas in each sentence. Choose from: for example, however, in addition, unlike, similarly. 

Have you heard of manga? Manga is a style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels. The roots of this type of storytelling go back centuries. _________, it’s only in recent years that manga’s popularity has exploded in the United States. There are many characteristics that make manga different from, say, a Marvel comic book. ________, manga characters have large, expressive, glistening eyes. ________, manga pages are read from right to left, like traditional Japanese writing. 

  • Ask students what they notice about punctuation and transition words and phrases in the article. Guide them to observe the following.
    • Commas are placed after transition words and phrases that begin a sentence. 
      • Example: “First, you send a digital design for the case to the printer.”
    • A pair of commas set off transition words and phrases in the middle of a sentence.
      • Example: “There’s no doubt, though, that 3-D printers have already begun to change lives in powerful ways.”
  • For more practice with transition words and phrases, use our Great Transitions: Anchor Chart, located in your Resources tab.

3. WRITE (25 MINUTES)

  • Project the Great Transitions: Anchor Chart. This chart is a list of common transition words and phrases categorized by the ways in which they are used: to add information, to show similarity between ideas, to show that one idea is different from another, to show that something is an example of what you just stated, to show cause and effect, or to add emphasis. Then have students work in pairs or independently to take the Write Like a Pro Challenge on page 31 of the printed magazine or at the bottom of the digital story page: 

Compose a detailed note to a friend who is helping you plan a surprise birthday party. Your message should:

Explain what tasks your friend needs to accomplish.

Use transitions to help your friend understand the order in which these tasks should be done.

Use a transition to emphasize any super-important information your friend needs to know.

  • Project students’ notes on your whiteboard to share their party plans and the transitions they used. 


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