Change the voice of the sentences from active to passive voice and vice versa. For example, "Educators prefer teaching lower grades" can become "Teaching lower grades is preferred by educators." This is helpful when you want to focus more on the object rather than the subject of the sentence.
Change the wording of a passage using synonyms. A thesaurus can prove quite useful for this task. "Children develop their language by interacting with those around them" can become "Kids acquire language skills by communicating with people close to them."
Change the verb of the mood to subjunctive if you want to paraphrase a wish, a request or an unrealistic situation. You can also change subjunctive mood to indicative. For example, "The minister requested that his assistant bring the documents," can become "The minister asked his assistant to bring the documents."
Change the order of the sentence's elements --- without altering the mood of the verb of the voice --- to stress the most important part for your work. For instance, "John Day (an imaginary person) was a successful writer, politician and businessman," can be "John Day is famous for his success as a businessman, politician and writer."
Use nicknames or colloquial terms to change a passage's wording. You can change "New York City" to "the Big Apple," for instance, or refer to "night shift" as the "graveyard shift." However, this technique is not acceptable when writing a formal paper.