Lesson: Paraphrasing

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Lesson Objective

Students will paraphrase their summary writing on a non-fiction passage.

Lesson Plan

Lesson Procedures:

  1. Teacher asks:  Can someone describe to the class in detail something they did over the weekend?  (Inform class they will be held accountable for being able to tell the class about that students weekend.)
  2. Students tells account of what they did.
  3. Teacher picks a popcicle stick and asks a different student to retell the first students story in their own words.
  4. Teacher asks:  How did (name of student) tell us about (name of student)'s weekend?  What did you notice?  Was it the same story as (name of student)?  (Look for answers like, they left out information, used different words, etc.) What part of the event did they tell us?  Was it the most important?
  5. Teacher writes down ideas on white board as students give reasons why there were differences in the two tellings of the story.  
  6. Teacher says:  What these students demonstrated for us was something called paraphrasing.  Paraphrase or paraphrasing means to tell about something using your own words.
  7. Choral Reponse of vocabulary.
  8. Teacher: We are going to practice doing this today.
  9. Teacher has "Paraphrasing Worksheet" distributed.  Teacher works from overhead or equivalent and students on their worksheets.
  10. Teacher reads paragraph and models paraphrasing the text into own words.  Some techniques to point out are using synonyms and rearranging the order of the words. 
  11. Teacher and students read the next paragraph.  Students paraphrase paragraph with teacher.  Teacher can point out synonyms and word order ideas if students get stuck.
  12. Students work on the next few in table groups while teacher circulates.
  13. After 5-10 minutes, review answers as a class using student presenters.
  14. Teacher hands out "Senor Summary Says Paraphrase" Worksheet for students to complete independently.  This can be used as an exit ticket.
  15. Students read through their summary for the Summary Writing Project and check for paraphrasing, revising their writing.


Teaching Reflection:

       The worksheets were challenging for the students.  It might help to have a chart up that describes techniques to be used by students so that they can refer to it while working independently.  For example:  Use synonyms - The great library had many books.  The large library housed several books.

Lesson Resources

Señor Summary Says - Paraphrase.docx  
Paraphrase Worksheet.docx  
4th Grade Reading Level Articles
Time for Kids - More Articles


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