Paraphrasing Relay Race

Learning how to paraphrase can be a real chore for both students and teachers. For students, it's hard to fight the temptation to just copy down language from other sources, change a few words, and try to pass it off as your own. It has become even more tempting to do so thanks to the convenience of researching via Wikipdia, Google, and smart phones. From the teacher's perspective, we want to instill paraphrasing skills in our students so that they don't fall victim to this temptation and fall farther down the slippery slope of plagiarism. Besides, learning how to paraphrase strengthens core language skills such as vocabulary and grammar in ways that few other activities can.

But how do you make it FUN?

I've come up with a pretty simple, yet highly entertaining solution: make a relay race activity out of it! (NOTE: It works best if the teacher has already done a presentation on how to paraphrase, illustrating to students how to use grammar and vocabulary to their advantage.)

Step One: On poster boards marked A, B, C, D... write down a number of sentences or paragraphs that you would like students to paraphrase. Tack these up on the wall outside your classroom before class starts.

Step Two: Divide your class into teams A, B, C, D... Tell students that their team numbers will match up with the poster boards outside. It works best if the teams are evenly matched in regards to both ability level and number of students.

Step Three: Inform students how the game will work. Explain that the first team member must go outside, read the first sentence on their team's board, try to remember it, and come back inside where they will tell their group the sentence. Now, the group must work together to write a paraphrased version of the original sentence. When they have successfully paraphrased the first sentence (and the teacher has "stamped" the paraphrase as correct with her stamp of approval), the next student goes out into the hall, reads the second sentence, and the process repeats itself.

Step Four: Let the students race! You can offer a prize for the winner if you like, but I think the real reward is engaging students in a fun and memorable activity that demonstrates that effective paraphrasing can not only help student improve overall language ability, but can also be fun!

NOTE: More competitive students may start to run and get a little physical, especially at the door. It's a good idea to set up some ground rules and make people who are boxing out, stalling, or otherwise getting too rowdy have a ten to twenty second time out in a penalty box of sorts. Enjoy!