7.12.G

ELA7th Grade

The Standard

differentiate between paraphrasing and plagiarism when using source materials

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English Language Arts and Reading

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students put a source’s ideas into their own words and sentence structures while keeping the original meaning. They identify when wording is copied too closely and give credit to the source.
What Mastery Looks Like: Students can restate a source’s main idea and key details with new wording and sentence structure. They preserve the original meaning and credit the source. They can point out copied phrases or overly close wording in a sample.
Common Misconceptions: Students may think replacing a few words or changing sentence order creates a paraphrase. Some believe copied wording is acceptable if they name the source. Others paraphrase so loosely that they change the author’s meaning.
How to Assess It: Give students a four-sentence source paragraph and two sample responses. Ask them to label each response, explain their choice, and rewrite the copied response as a credited paraphrase.

Lesson moves

Give pairs source cards and response cards to sort into accurate paraphrase, copied wording, or changed meaning, then require evidence for each choice.
Ask students to paraphrase a short paragraph, underline ideas kept from the source, and circle words or structures they changed.
Play Paraphrase Repair, where teams revise copied or inaccurate samples and earn points for new wording, accurate meaning, and source credit.
Compare an original news paragraph with a social media summary, then identify whether the post paraphrases, copies, or misrepresents the source.

Keep exploring

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