Paraphrasing What You Heard

1. Read aloud twice, without showing it: "The sea otter sleeps floating on its back. To stop drifting away, it often wraps itself in long strands of kelp."
2. Take three spoken paraphrases from the class. Write them on the board exactly as said.
3. Judge them only for accuracy, not for neatness. Ask of each: "Did it lose anything? Did it add anything?" A typical good one: "Sea otters sleep lying on their backs in the water, and they wind seaweed around themselves so they don't float off." A typical loss: "Otters sleep in seaweed" — the floating on the back has gone.

1. Read the bee passage aloud: "When a honeybee finds a good patch of flowers, she flies back to the hive. There she performs a dance on the honeycomb. The direction of her waggle tells the other bees which way to fly, and the length of the waggle tells them how far. Within minutes, dozens of bees leave the hive and head for the flowers."
2. Name the portion: "Paraphrase only the third sentence — the one about the waggle." Write on the board: "PORTION = sentence 3."
3. Think aloud. "First I say it to myself without looking: the way she wiggles points the others in the right direction, and how long she wiggles shows the distance." Then write it. Count words: the original sentence is 23 words, the paraphrase about 20.
4. Show a wrong attempt: "Bees dance to show where food is." Ask: "What's missing?" Answer to fish for: direction and distance are separate — that's the whole point of the sentence. Say: "That is a summary of the whole passage. It is true, but it is not a paraphrase of sentence 3."
5. Write the rule: "Summary = shorter, the big idea. Paraphrase = about the same length, all the details, my words."
6. Switch media. Point to the bar chart of library books. Paraphrase it aloud: "The class borrowed the most books in October, and the fewest in November." Ask what makes this harder than the bee sentence. Answer: there are no words to change — you must turn numbers into a sentence.

“A paraphrase is about the same length as the bit you heard. If yours got much shorter, you summarized. Say it out loud first — your own talking voice uses your own words.”

1. Read a new passage twice: "Camels can go for days without drinking. They do not store water in their humps, as many people think. The hump is mostly fat, which the camel's body can use for energy when food is scarce. When a thirsty camel finally finds water, it can drink more than 100 liters in about ten minutes."
2. Students paraphrase two named portions on whiteboards: sentences 2 and 3 together, and sentence 4.
3. Partners swap boards and check two things. First, underline any run of three words copied from the original (read the original again for them). Second, check off each detail kept: "not water," "fat," "energy," "when food is scarce."
4. Partners count words in sentence 4 (18) against the paraphrase. A board that says "Camels drink a lot" is held up and the class names what was lost: the 100 liters and the ten minutes.

“Check the details before you check the words. A paraphrase in beautiful new words that says the camel stores water in its hump is wrong.”

1. Students complete the printable paraphrasing page.
2. Read any passage on the page aloud twice before students write — this standard is about what was heard, so the first contact should be listening, not reading.

1. Read one student's paraphrase of camel sentence 4 aloud, then the original. The class shows thumbs up only if every detail is there and no three-word run is copied.