Our teachers and students had so much fun with this winter-themed lesson on paraphrasing! For those of us here in Texas, our students in grades 3-8 will write short constructed responses and a response to text essay on their state test this year. Our students really struggled with the idea behind paraphrasing and taking the author's words and making them their own. So... we backed it up, slowed it down, and modeled, modeled, modeled. To make it even better, we used songs, poems, and nursery rhymes that the kids were familiar with.
The idea came to us to use the song "Let It Go" from the popular Disney movie Frozen when the students learned they would be singing it for the winter music concert at school. By the time the students had finished the lessons on paraphrasing, the teacher was concerned that they were going to sing the wrong lyrics at the concert! lol They did such a great job of seeing what paraphrasing really is without the stress of having to make connections and comprehend complex text at the same time. Now that they know the skill, we can begin to apply it in our RTT short constructed responses and extended essays.
If you are struggling with this skill in your class, download the lesson now and take a little stress off both you and your students!
They then gave it a try using The Itsy Bitsy Spider!
