Appropriate grades or age groups:
Elementary School
Middle School
High School & Beyond

Estimated time to complete project or implement technique:
10-60 minutes

Materials needed (if applicable):
Thesaurus, Dictionary

Project instructions or description of technique:
Students rewrite sentences, paragraphs or entire stories by choosing new words from a thesaurus and checking on their nuances in a good dictionary. They can rewrite their own stories, other peer's, classmate's or familiy member's stories or those by favorite authors. Try asking them to change the mood to hilarity, somberness, lightheartedness, dread etc., by choosing various new synonyms from the thesaurus.

Other suggestions or comments:
Have students share their stories, sentences, paragraphs etc, new version and old and encourage feedback. Make it a game to see if the audience can identify the original with the altered. Also, retell classic fairy tales with the word substitutions.