Brittany's Classroom Management Kit

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary to plagiarize is, “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own”. More than once as students we’ve heard the teacher wax about the severe consequences of plagiarizing – also more than once we’ve seen those consequences play out in the classroom. As pre-service teachers we now have to engage plagiarism in the battlefield of writing and what a battle it is. Plagiarism.org says, “Studies indicate that approximately 30% of all students may be plagiarizing on every written assignment they complete” This singular statistic speaks to the situation that many classrooms are currently facing. Delving into the reasons that students do plagiarize doesn’t illuminate one to the crux of the issue as you’d suppose – in fact there is a bit of skewered reasoning that comes with plagiarizing. What I mean is that some students plagiarize because the assigned work isn’t important to them or because the work is too important to them in receiving a good final grade. Since the reasons for plagiarizing are many, the ways that you handle plagiarism must be firm and blanketing in their effect.

 

However there are some ways to fend off plagiarize, the first way being to enlighten your student to what plagiarize is and give them ways to avoid doing it inadvertently. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a website that is full of lesson ideas for educating students about plagiarizing, copyright, air use, etc. Do these require entire class time or lessons to get the information across? I don’t think so, I believe that shorter activities spread out throughout the lesson would work best. I think this is the best method because you don’t want to take away from class time, but moreover because teaching the information as it’s needed means that it shall be absorbed more readily and not overwhelm students. One activity that the site suggested was a Copy Quiz Game Show, where students would be put into two teams and there were be two lines leading to two chairs – each marked with either true or false. The teacher would then gauge student’s knowledge about the following:

 

• Copyright

• Fair Use

• Free Speech

• Public Domain

• File-sharing

• Piracy

• Plagiarism

• Infringement

 

Afterwards, the teacher would define each of the above terms for the students – discussing with the students what some examples of each would be. This way, students can see some of the ambiguities that come with the topic as well as have questions answered about it. The activity didn’t suggest this, but for my Social Studies class the site offered “Why Thomas Jefferson Would Love Napster?” as student reading, so off that resource suggestion I would try to use content-related materials to inform students about both the topic of plagiarizing and of the content. In doing this though, teachers should make sure to stress the severity and consequences of plagiarizing another work in terms of laws. Education World suggests that teacher “….make it clear that those consequences will apply whether the plagiarizing is deliberate or unintentional.” Yet, I believe that while this is key, that teachers should also consider the situation of the student before passing judgment – perhaps one simply forgot to put in a citation for a quote or some ELL’s cultures think that imitation is the highest form of respect. That’s just something to keep in mind when going over student papers and the possibility of plagiarism arises. Teachers should also discuss what different types of plagiarism look like, which can range from directly copying and pasting to paraphrasing with little original ideas added.

 

In terms of tools to avoid plagiarism, Plagiarism.org offers some tips for students to avoid plagiarizing and to make writing reports easier. The tips are the following:

 

• Talk with a teacher if you are confused about how to cite a source or about suggested sites to use as a resource for citing in a time crunch. In our case, it would be to make yourself able to meet with student over such matters.

• No matter how cliché, write an outline. By having students plan out their main ideas they lessen their chance of their future research seeping into plagiarism territory. There are some really helpful graphic organizers out there that can help plan out a paper as well as help take notes with.

• Speaking of, notes are key to not plagiarizing as well. Students shouldn’t just go to a website and then write a section of their paper, they should be prompted to take key ideas and facts in the reading and jot those down. This helps students mull the ideas around in their head before meshing them together with the overall aim of the paper. Also, an added plus to writing out the information is that one’s muscle memory kicks in and the students remember the information better from physically writing it out.

• Lastly, when in doubt if the idea if theirs, students should cite. This saves the students from unintentional moments of plagiarism and also helps buff up the paper’s credibility. Some tools that are really good for citing a multitude of things are the sites EasyBib or Bibme, both only require you to type into the resource and it fills in as much as it can before asking for your input. Both of quick, easy to use, and best of all free.

 

Plagiarism.org also offers a plagiarism checker, which enables either the student or teacher to check for any type of plagiarism if the worry is there. Overall though, my policy on plagiarism in my syllabus sums up all my research here pretty well.

 

Excerpt from my syllbaus: Plagiarism is when you try to pass someone's work as your own, sometimes unintentionally. Unfortunately, plagiarism is a real issue in today's educational system and far too easy to do sometimes. However, I must stress that you must credit your sources when borrowing anyone's work for any sort of product, essay or otherwise. If you are found to have plagiarized there is a zero tolerance policy and you shall be put through the school's own plagiarism policies. Being a Social Studies class, we look are many types of documents and some you've never cited before. As such, we will be briefly looking at different citation methods throughout the unit as needed. However if you are ever in doubt when writing an essay or citing for any product, then simply take a note where the information came from and come see me for help. If citations are formatted incorrectly or missing yet the information is quoted as not being yours, you will not loose points, but have to fix your errors before I fully grade it.