paraphrasing activities 5th grade

An expert shares 5 things you need to get more organized — starting at $10

Share this —

Watch Full Episodes
Read With Jenna
TODAY Table
Newsletters
Citi Music Series
Pets & Animals
Asian American Voices
Black Voices
Latino Voices
LGBTQ Voices
Listen All Day

Follow today

More Brands

5th grade decision-making skills: Find out what you need to know

Children are not born with the ability to make responsible decisions. It is a skill that is learned over time and involves making mistakes and learning from them. As your child becomes more independent, he’ll be faced with making more decisions on his own. Director of the Rutgers Social and Emotional Laboratory Maurice Elias says that it is important to build this skill before the teenage years when problems and decisions can have more serious consequences.

The late elementary years are a time of great personal and social growth. As children grow older, they become better at making decisions, solving problems, and working in groups. Early adolescence begins around the age of 11, and this brings along its own challenges. As children’s bodies begin to change their emotions can seem to change at a moment’s notice. Developing your child’s social and emotional skills can help him manage his emotions and behavior and make responsible choices. The concepts highlighted in this section are based on the five sets of competencies developed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning ( CASEL ).

The ability to make responsible decisions combines your child’s ability to identify and manage his emotions with his social awareness and relationship skills. You can support your child’s growing ability to make responsible decisions so that he is better equipped to make decisions on his own. Decisions like whom your child sits with at lunch or which shirt he puts on each day may seem small to you, but in the later elementary years, decisions can become more serious. For example, in the late elementary years, some children get their first smartphones or unsupervised internet time. Choices your child makes about how to present himself online can have long-term consequences that he may not understand yet. With your guidance, he can be better prepared for the future.

Your child should be able to understand and explain why it is important to obey rules and laws, whether it’s traffic laws, rules at home, or rules in the classroom.

Your fifth-grader should be able to set some goals and priorities and create a plan related to them. These priorities can be related to schoolwork, like getting a good grade or completing a reading assignment, or relationships, like helping a friend or family member. Your child should also be able to think of different solutions for problems and think of the consequences of their choices.

Keep in mind every child develops at his own pace, both physically and emotionally. If you have concerns about your adolescent’s development, please contact your health care provider or your child’s teacher or school counselor.

Learn more about how to support your child with our fifth-grade decision-making tips page .

Parent Toolkit resources were developed by NBC News Learn with the help of subject-matter experts, including Maurice Elias, Director, Rutgers Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab; Jennifer Miller, Author, Confident Parents, Confident Kids; and Anne Morrison, Pre-Kindergarten Teacher, Lycée Français de New York.

Interactive resources you can assign in your digital classroom from TPT.

Easel Activities

Easel Assessments

Unlock access to 4 million resources — at no cost to you — with a school-funded subscription..

paraphrasing

All Formats

Resource types, all resource types, results for paraphrasing.

Summarizing Paraphrasing Quoting | Digital and Printable

Also included in: ADVANCED Reading Skills Task Card Bundle | Digital and Printable

Paraphrasing Task Cards Advanced Set for Grades 4-8

Easel Activity

Also included in: Reading and ELA Task Card Massive Bundle - 107 Task Card Sets!

Paraphrasing, Quoting, and Summarizing: A Unit on Informative Writing

Also included in: Research Paper Writing Unit: Lessons, PowerPoint, Handouts, Research Bundle

Quoting and Paraphrasing Lesson and Practice INTERACTIVE GOOGLE SLIDES

Internet Activities

Also included in: Interactive Google Slides LANGUAGE ARTS Lessons and Activities BUNDLE 2

Paraphrasing Task Cards Beginner Set for Grades 2-4

Note Taking and Paraphrasing - Research Skills

Also included in: Research Project Bundle: Essential Research Skills

Avoiding Plagiarism Paraphrasing Activity with Movie Quotes

Also included in: Movie Quote Paraphrasing Bundle

Summarizing & Paraphrasing PowerPoint, Notes, Worksheets, Test PRINT & DIGITAL

Also included in: Fiction & Nonfiction Reading -Teach, Practice, Test BUNDLE - Middle School ELA

Summarizing Paraphrasing and Quoting BUNDLE

Paraphrasing | Print and Digital

Summarizing & Paraphrasing Practice Worksheets and Test PRINT & DIGITAL

Summarizing and Paraphrasing Activities - Research Skills

Also included in: Library Skills Print MEGA Bundle

Paraphrasing and Summarizing Lessons for Nonfiction Reading

PARAPHRASING Task Cards {Say It In Your Own Words}

Note Taking and Paraphrasing Activities | Note Taking Graphic Organizers

Also included in: Reading Comprehension Skills Growing Bundle - Reading Strategies Activities

Paraphrasing Bundle [5 Unique Activities | No Prep | Print & Go!]

Research Skills: Learning to Paraphrase

Also included in: Secondary ELA Mega Bundle: Save over 40%!

Paraphrasing Task Card Differentiation Bundle

Paraphrasing - Steps to Great Paraphrasing PowerPoint

Microsoft OneDrive

Also included in: Research Bundle: PowerPoints, Activities, Handouts, and More for Middle Grades

Summarizing and Paraphrasing Research Activities for Google Slides

Also included in: Library Skills for Google Drive - BUNDLE 2

Ramen Noodle Summarizing and Cow Cud Paraphrasing | Nonfiction Text

Also included in: Synthesis Essay Bundle for AP™English Language & Composition - AP™Lang Exam

Paraphrasing vs. Plagiarism

Research Skills: Paraphrasing and Practice Worksheet

Digital Summarizing, Paraphrasing & Quoting | Distance Learning

Also included in: Digital Resource Bundle | Literary Reading Skills | Distance Learning

TPT empowers educators to teach at their best.

Keep in Touch!

Are you getting the free resources, updates, and special offers we send out every week in our teacher newsletter?

Minds in Bloom

By Rachel Lynette

Teaching Kids to Paraphrase, Step by Step

Teaching kids to paraphrase is often just as challenging as paraphrasing is on its own. Rachel Lynette shares some of her top tips for teaching students how to paraphrase, step by step, in this blog post. You can also learn more about two sets of paraphrasing task cards that are available in her Teachers Pay Teachers store!

Start by Talking

Paraphrase together.

At just 8.5 square miles, the Pacific island country of Nauru is one of the smallest countries in the world. The island was once rich in phosphate, but most of the resource has been mined, leaving damage to the environment behind. Nauru has a population of about 10,000 people.

Paraphrased Text:

Nauru is a Pacific island country that is only 8.5 square miles in area. It is one of the smallest countries on the planet and only about 10,000 people live there. Nauru has mined its once plentiful supply of phosphate. This has damaged the environment on the island.

Independent Practice

Pulling It All Together

I apologize, but I had to remove all comments and disable commenting on this post because the topic attracts scores of bottom-feeders trying to drum up business for their unethical term paper writing services.

Join our Amazing Group of Teachers!

Subscribe to get weekly freebies, teacher care, and more!

[…] example, when children are learning about gravity, it’s unlikely that the best way to teach them would be through […]

[…] and Cassi at Minds in Bloom offer this advice when paraphrasing – think about the 4 […]

I Used My Own Words! Paraphrasing Informational Texts

Paraphrasing helps students make connections with prior knowledge, demonstrate comprehension, and remember what they have read. Through careful explanation and thorough modeling by the teacher in this lesson, students learn to use paraphrasing to monitor their comprehension and acquire new information. They also realize that if they cannot paraphrase after reading, they need to go back and reread to clarify information. In pairs, students engage in guided practice so that they can learn to use the strategy independently. Students will need prompting and encouragement to use this strategy after the initial instruction is completed. The lesson can be extended to help students prepare to write reports about particular topics.

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

Materials and Technology

Preparation

Student objectives.

Students will

Session 1: Introduction of Paraphrasing

Session 2: review and guided practice with paraphrasing, session 3: review and guided practice with paraphrasing, session 4: review and independent practice with paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing is a good way to prepare students to write written reports. When students put information into their own words, they are not copying directly from a text. After the previous four sessions, a possible extension would be to identify another topic (such as countries, planets, plants), have students brainstorm what kind of questions would be interesting to answer about these, assign print materials or websites for students to read and paraphrase, take notes to answer the questions, and prepare written reports. These would be more formal than the quick writes that were done in the paraphrasing sessions.

Student Assessment / Reflections

Add new comment

Print this resource

Explore Resources by Grade

Kindergarten K

This Reading Mama

Steps of Teaching Writers to Paraphrase

By thisreadingmama 3 Comments

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.

Teaching Writers to Paraphrase - This Reading Mama

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:

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!

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

Want MORE Free Teaching Resources?

Join thousands of other subscribers to get hands-on activities and printables delivered right to your inbox!

April 23, 2020 at 10:12 am

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!

April 23, 2020 at 10:58 am

You’re very welcome! 🙂

April 24, 2020 at 1:19 pm

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.

Paraphrase Games and Activities You Should Know

Table of contents.

Paraphrase games and activities teach your students to paraphrase without putting them to sleep. This article teaches and reinforces this skill in fun and exciting ways by using activities and games.

Ensure your text is unique. Let INK paraphrase it for you.

Need more AI Words? Go UNLIMITED with our best offers

Unleash INK’s full AI generation power with the INK Editor Web . Ask INK to write anything and start creating more engaging content.

Choose a tone of voice or generate AI text in French, Spanish, and other languages with Hey INK’s advanced features. Click here to try .

Students must sometimes find solutions or facts from what they’ve read and not merely duplicate the source. We call this “paraphrasing.”

Why does this matter? First, we want to make sure we don’t plagiarize, so we don’t use someone else’s work and call it our own. After rephrasing and rethinking, teachers need to hear what a student says to know if they understand.

Paraphrase games and activities teach your students to paraphrase without putting them to sleep.

Why Play Paraphrase Games?

Teachers must often hear students synthesize and rewrite words to evaluate if they grasp it. Most people aren’t born knowing how to paraphrase. These activities and games teach and reinforce paraphrase.

Most of us aren’t born knowing how to paraphrase, though. Use these games and activities to help your students learn and practice paraphrasing.

1. Paraphrasing Races

The teacher puts the students into groups and gives each group a sentence. They have three minutes to come up with as many different ways to say the sentence as they can. Each good way of putting it is worth one point. The winner is the team with the most points.

2. Fun Question and Answer

At its core, paraphrasing means rewriting something in your own words, so have students start by doing that. Split your students into pairs and ask them questions.

Questions like “What did you do yesterday after school?” Tell me your vacation plans etc.

You should show the class how to do this a few times before you start.

3. Quiz, Quiz, Trade Game

This is another version of the “Talk at First” Game. Start by:

The students then switch places. Then, they trade cards and go on to find different partners.

4. The Use of Index Cards

Ask students to take something their parent or sibling says and put it in their own words. Send them home with two index cards. On one, have them write down the original idea and on the other, how they changed it. Share the next day in class.

5. Identify Me

Make index cards with samples of academic text, like a few sentences from your science or social studies book.

Instructions

Give each group both a set of sample text cards and a set of blank index cards. Have each group choose someone to be the first judge and someone else to be the reader.

The judge picks a ready-made card and reads it out loud. Then, the judge puts it in the middle of the group so that everyone can see it.

Everyone in the group (except the reader) rewrites the text in their own words and writes it on a blank index card.

The card is then put in the reader. The reader reads each quoted card aloud, and the judge tries to guess who authored it. Give points for each right answer. Switch roles and keep playing until all of the task cards are used up.

6. Paraphrase Together

Try rewriting a short paragraph as a whole class. Use your document, camera or write it on the board to show the paragraph. You might want to give each student a copy. Make sure your pupils are aware of the distinction between paraphrasing and summarizing . Talk about the different ways to do things.

The students are to use the Four R’s to paraphrase correctly.

Reword the sentences

Students should try to reword the sentences. Use synonyms for words and phrases whenever you can.

Rearrange the sentences

Students should be able to change the order of the words in a sentence to make a new sentence. They can even switch the order of the ideas in a paragraph.

Realize that s ome words are unchangeable

Students should be aware that some words and phrases cannot be changed. Words such as names, dates, titles, etc., but they can be rephrased in a different way.

Recheck for same meaning

Make sure that the meaning of your paraphrase is the same as the original.

Paraphrase games are a great way to practice and develop your paraphrasing skills . They provide a space to reflect on and improve on your writing skills as well as work on teamwork, and creativity.

With a bit of creative thinking and originality, these games provide a lot of possibility for unforgettable moments.

Pam is an expert grammarian with years of experience teaching English, writing and ESL Grammar courses at the university level. She is enamored with all things language and fascinated with how we use words to shape our world.

Explore All Paraphrasing Tool Articles

Advanced & effective paraphrase simplify tool.

The paraphrase simplify tool is designed to paraphrase and simplify your text effectively. This tool can be used for in-depth…

Paraphrasing Tool

What Is a Paraphrase Citation?

When you paraphrase, many people think you don’t have to give a citation. Understand that because you have used someone’s…

Paraphrasing Vs Summarizing: What’s the Difference?

Paraphrasing and summarizing are two similar activities, but they are not the same. To understand the difference between paraphrasing vs…

The Best Paraphrase Tools: A Review

When it comes to paraphrase tools, there are so many to choose. This is why we decided some paraphrase tool…

The Best Paraphrasing Hacks From Students Themselves

Did you have a tough concept that you had a lot of trouble understanding? Paraphrasing helps with that. But it…

What are the Best Paraphrasing Tool to Download

Paraphrasing is the process of rewriting or rephrase a sentence without changing its meaning. A paraphrasing tool allows you to…

Our Mission

Teaching Students to Paraphrase

Ideas for scaffolding paraphrasing so that students correctly learn this valuable but difficult-to-master skill.

A teacher helping her middle school student with her writing

When discussing text in the classroom, it’s tough for students to shift from utilizing an author’s words (copying) to accepting the challenge to express that author’s idea in their own words (paraphrasing).

But teaching effective paraphrasing is necessary because the use of paraphrasing facilitates important literacy skills : It encourages repeated reading, develops note-taking habits as students track quotes and outline text details, and expands vocabulary as they consider appropriate ways to describe the original text. The skill may seem daunting to students because it takes time to find the appropriate words to reshape a sentence, but that is time well spent.

We also need to teach paraphrasing, of course, so that students develop the skill set required to avoid committing plagiarism unintentionally .

Student Tools

One way to support students is to make them aware of tools that may help when they’re paraphrasing. Think of these as training wheels—students won’t use them forever.

Academic Phrasebank : Ready-made phrases help students organize their sentences when they paraphrase. The site provides sentence starters for defining ideas, comparing and contrasting ideas, describing cause and effect, and explaining evidence to support statements.

For instance, if a student were paraphrasing vocabulary word X, they would be able to find sentence starters such as “The word X encompasses...,” “The word X is challenging to define because...,” and “The word X is intended to....”

Ashford University Writing Center : This website has a five-item quiz to review the paraphrasing process. It allows students to identify examples and non-examples of paraphrasing for a given text.

When examining non-examples, students are shown how replacing or rearranging words is akin to copying and pasting on a computer. Students see examples of effective paraphrasing, including a change of sentence structure or personal elaboration combined with limited quoted information.

Tone Analyzer : This tool allows students to enter a brief sample from a text and receive an analysis of the tone. When using this tool, students can request an assessment of whether the text illustrates anger, joy, sadness, etc. In addition to these emotions, the website includes language descriptors such as confident (used to describe texts that use active voice and/or words such as will , must , etc.) or tentative (texts with words such as seems , appears , might , etc.). This tool is useful in helping students successfully align the tone of their paraphrased material with the tone of the original text.

Student Self-Check Prompts

Students should outgrow the tools above, and teachers can encourage that growth by showing them how to monitor their own progress with paraphrasing. Students can self-check to determine how on track with paraphrasing they are by asking themselves these questions:

Student Cautions

Because the journey to paraphrasing may involve a few hiccups, it’s a good idea to identify potential student challenges. When paraphrasing, remind students that they should:

Teachers can push students to move beyond copying by encouraging them to see paraphrasing as the go-to reading response. When we equip students with needed resources, we make student voice the rule instead of the exception.

IMAGES

Summarize & Paraphrase
Paraphrase Activity 3 Easy Steps to Paraphrasing Non-Fiction
20 Paraphrasing Worksheets Elementary
Paraphrasing interactive and downloadable worksheet. You can do the exercises onl
Paraphrasing 4 worksheet
Paraphrasing Worksheets Elementary Lesson for Teaching Nonfiction Summarizing in 2020

VIDEO

Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing
Summary-Making and Paraphrasing Grade 10-11-12
Effective Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing
EP7 Paraphrasing

COMMENTS

How Old Are You in 4th Grade?
In the United States, the average age of a fourth grader is 9 years old. The age can vary depending on the child’s birthday and date of entry into school. When children follow the traditional elementary school course, they are 9 years old w...
How Should You Write 6th Grade Graduation Speeches?
When crafting a speech for a 6th grade graduation, students should provide an opening sentence that is humorous, memorable or inspirational. The graduation speech should provide details about the journey that led to the graduation.
5th Grade Responsible Decision-Making Skills
Children are not born with the ability to make responsible decisions, but it is learned over time and involves making mistakes and learning from them. Stay warm and look chic in these 11 winter fashion essentials Sections Shows More Follow ...
Paraphrasing Activity Teaching Resources
This resource has an introduction and activities for paraphrasing for grades 3-5. Included: Post It activity makes a great exit ticket
Paraphrasing Teaching Resources
NO PREP DIGITAL LESSON: Engage students in 5th, 6th, and 7th grades with this interactive lesson as you introduce or review the
Teaching Kids to Paraphrase, Step by Step
Try paraphrasing a short paragraph together as a class. Display the paragraph with your document camera or on the board. You may want to give your students
I Used My Own Words! Paraphrasing Informational Texts
modeling by the teacher in this lesson, students learn to use paraphrasing to monitor
Page 1 Explicitly teaching Grade 5/6 students how to independently
Paraphrasing Teaching Sequence. Assumption of students prior knowledge: Being students in Grade 5/6, most have developed independent reading strategies by
Paraphrasing: Lesson Plan
Lesson Plan Grades: 3-5.
Steps of Teaching Writers to Paraphrase
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
Paraphrase Games and Activities You Should Know
At its core, paraphrasing means rewriting something in your own words, so have students start by doing that. Split your students into pairs and ask them
Paraphrasing Game
Worksheets: Paraphrasing Practice 5th Grade Writing, Writing School
Paraphrase Lesson
Paraphrasing is a way of putting the information you read in your own words. It helps us learn and remember the main idea and supporting details.
Teaching Students to Paraphrase
Academic Phrasebank: Ready-made phrases help students organize their sentences when they paraphrase. The site provides sentence starters for defining ideas