Free Paraphrasing Lesson Plan for 8th Grade Students

Topic: Paraphrasing

Objectives & Outcomes:

• Students will be able to paraphrase given sentences in a paragraph

Materials

• Paragraph with one or more sentences to be paraphrased
• Pencils and paper for each student

Warm-up

• Ask students to look at the paragraph and underline the sentences to be paraphrased.
• Ask students to explain what paraphrasing is and why it is important.

Direct Instruction

• Define paraphrasing as the process of rephrasing something in your own words.
• Explain that paraphrasing is important because it allows us to understand what someone is saying by putting it in our own language, and it also helps us to avoid plagiarism, or using someone else's words without proper attribution.
• Provide examples of how to paraphrase using the given sentences. For example, "The girl ran quickly down the street" could be rephrased as "The girl hurried down the street."

Guided Practice

• Provide the paragraph with the sentences that the students will be paraphrasing.
• Have the students work in small groups and provide each group with a set of paraphrasing prompts. The prompts should be sentences or phrases that can be used to help the students rephrase the given sentences. For example, "The girl ran quickly down the street" could be paraphrased as "The girl hurried down the street" with the help of the paraphrasing prompt "quickly."
• Have the students work together to paraphrase the given sentences using the prompts.

Independent Practice

• Provide the students with a new paragraph, with one or more sentences that they must paraphrase using the techniques learned in class.
• Have the students work independently to paraphrase the given sentences.
• Provide the students with a rubric to assess their work. The rubric should include a criteria for assessing the accuracy of the paraphrases and for assessing the quality of the supporting reasoning provided by the students.

Closure

• Have the students share their paraphrases with a partner. Ask the students to reflect on the process of paraphrasing and how it compares to the more traditional process of simply rewriting the given sentences.
• Ask the students to share any insights they had about the process of paraphrasing.

Assessment

• Observe the students during the independent practice activity and provide feedback on their ability to accurately paraphrase the given sentences.
• Collect the students' written paraphrases and use the rubric to evaluate their overall ability to accurately paraphrase the given sentences.