If you’ve ever worked on teaching writers to paraphrase, particularly younger writers like 3rd through 5th grade, you know what a challenge it can be. As adults, we may know how to do it. But how do you break it down into teachable steps so that young writers can learn how?
I’m so glad you asked! Let’s talk about some simple steps you can teach young writers so they can grasp the concept of paraphrasing with expository text in their own writing.
Be sure to click on the teal download button to grab the freebie at the END of this post!
What is Paraphrasing?
The first thing writers need to understand is what it means to paraphrase. A simple definition might go something like paraphrasing means you take someone else’s words and put them into your own words.
This sounds rather abstract to young writers, so it is best taught by using examples. You can do this by pulling a sentence or two from a nonfiction book. Read the sentence(s) out loud. Then, close the book and paraphrase the sentences.
Chances are, you did one or both of these:
- changed the word order of the sentence
- used synonyms for certain words in the sentence
After you’ve modeled how to do it, you might ask your writers to think of other ways to paraphrase the sentence. Write the examples down so your visual learners can SEE what you’re doing.
Try it again with another sentence or two pulled from books.
Why is Paraphrasing Needed?
The most obvious answer is that we don’t want our learners copying text and claiming it as their own {because that’s plagiarism}.
The less obvious answer is as our writers grow, we want to encourage them to branch out and write about topics they don’t know a lot about. This requires some research before they start writing. They might look on the internet or use nonficition books to build their background knowledge.
Our writers need to know how to take the information they read and then make it their own. We want to help them develop their writers’ voice, even with expository text.
Be sure to scroll down to snag my paraphrasing freebie!
Steps of Teaching Writers to Paraphrase
Understanding what paraphrasing is and why we do it is a great start.
Our developing writers, especially those that struggle, need to have paraphrasing broken down into simple steps they can follow so they can do it for themselves.
These are the steps I suggest for teaching writers to paraphrase:
1. Read the section of text. Make sure you understand what you are reading.
If writers are reading a longer nonfiction text, I suggest reading a SHORT passage, not the entire book! That’s because learners need to understand and remember what they’ve read. Understanding is KEY to paraphrasing. You can’t paraphrase if you don’t understand or remember.
This means your learners will need to already know how to use the text features of nonfiction texts to find what they need to know. {Feel free to grab our helpful Nonfiction Text Features Chart or have your learners make their own Text Features Folder if they need support in this area.}
2. Take time to think about what you read. What was important or interesting to you?
Stop and think about what you read. What seems most important? What seems the most interesting?
{Again, the text features like bold print, charts, captions and photographs can help them in finding important or interesting facts.}
3. Plan out what you want to include in your writing.
Take time to choose what you will include when you write. Jot a list if it helps.
Learners can use a graphic organizer to organize their thoughts. {You can find several nonfiction graphic organizers here and here. These are for reading, but they will also work for getting ideas organized with nonfiction writing.}
Being familiar with text structures can help your learners organize their writing. For example, if they’re writing about the differences between domesticated dogs and a wild wolves, they will probably need to use the compare and contrast structure in their writing.
4. Write it in your words. Try NOT to look at the book.
Sure, you might look at the book for spellings of certain words or to quickly jog your memory. But for the most part, try NOT to look at the book.
NOT looking is KEY! Looking at the book makes it too tempting to paraphrase the text sentence-by-sentence instead of paraphrasing the key ideas from the text. And when writers paraphrase sentence-by-sentence it makes it sound too much like the original text.
Do you have any tips for teaching young writers to paraphrase? Be sure to share them in the comments below.
Grab the paraphrasing freebie below:
Enjoy teaching!
~Becky
A great resource! So many children don’t know how to paraphrase, but we often forget how to teach the steps and model it. Thank you!
You’re very welcome! 🙂
Another tip I learned from Excellence in Writing is to teach students to choose 3 key words from each sentence (for short passages) or 3 key ideas that will remind them of the content they’ll be paraphrasing. Then put the original source out of sight, and write the sentence or idea in their own words, using the key words to jog their memory. Key words could be noun, verb + another. Sketches that can be made faster than writing the word are also acceptable memory joggers.