How to Teach Paraphrasing to Students
How do you explain paraphrasing to your students? How do you help students avoid plagiarism? Do you have students who copy an entire answer to a question, or even an entire essay word for word? The internet has made it so easy for students to look up information, but once they find what they are looking for, they don’t know how to put it in their own words.
We constantly catch our students plagiarizing. It’s likely they are plagiarizing because they haven’t been taught how to properly paraphrase. It’s important to teach your students paraphrasing strategies to avoid the consequences of plagiarism.
Students often need to look back at a text for evidence to support their ideas, answer a question, make a claim, write an essay, etc. Students often take the easy way out and use a direct quote; however, it is important to teach them the skill of paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is putting what you read into your own words. Paraphrasing also shows you that your students comprehend what they are reading. Our favorite paraphrasing strategy is the 4 R’s. Teaching students the 4 R’s of paraphrasing will help them avoid any chance of plagiarism.
The 4 R’s are pretty easy to remember:
- Realize
- Replace
- Rearrange
- Recheck
Let’s take a closer look at each ‘R’ in the strategy.
REALIZE that some words cannot be changed. You want to teach your students to circle words that we cannot change. Some of these words include names, dates, titles, places, specific nouns, etc. If your students are paraphrasing a text about ‘tablets’, they cannot change this specific noun to ‘computers’ because these are two very different types of devices.
REPLACE words with synonyms. Underline key words and add these keywords to a ‘Synonym Word Box” or write them on a post-it note. Identify and write down synonyms for each keyword. Then, use these synonyms when paraphrasing. If a student is having difficulty identifying synonyms, teach them how to use a thesaurus. We have our students download the Dictionary app on their phones so they always have easy access to this tool. Check out this FREEBIE for examples and practice when using the ‘Replace’ part of the strategy.
REARRANGE or change the order of words or ideas to make new sentences. Use synonyms from the word box or post-it, but don’t just plug in these synonyms because the sentence may not make sense. Students will have to
change the order of words to make a new sentence. To get started, use a sentence starter at the beginning of the paraphrase. Have students choose one that is easy to remember, this way they can always use it. Here are some of our most popular sentence starters that students like to use:
- According to the text…
- In the text…
- The text says…
- According to the author…
- The evidence states…
- The author reports…
RECHECK what is written to make sure the sentences make sense. Read it aloud. Oftentimes our students who read it aloud catch mistakes they would not have caught when they read it to themselves quietly. Students can proofread their work by using the CUPS and ARMS strategy to edit and revise. Here are two FREEBIES you can use in your classroom to help your students during the proofreading process: EDITING using the CUPS strategy and REVISING using the ARMS strategy.
It may seem like a lot of steps and things to remember, so give your students a checklist to follow to make sure they don’t leave anything out. Data is also important, so to make this easier for you, use a rubric to monitor progress. Find this and more in our 4 R’s of Paraphrasing resource.
Leave us a comment and tell us which R you think your students will benefit the most from.
