The Middle Game Transition

Right now transitioning from the opening to the middle game seems to be the most difficult thing for me. As my teacher says, this seems to be the point at which you have to come up with a plan and, at the moment, this is very hard for me to do.

I think I need to keep working on checkmate exercises. That way I'll have some idea of what patterns I need to get my pieces into in order to set up a mate. Tactics Trainer has been most helpful with this and Chess Mentor to a lesser extent. I think Chess Mentor would be more helpful if I'd hurry up and get through the easier lessons.