Preventing Plagiarism – Encouraging Literacy

When I first began giving my grade six students written assignments, 5-Paragraph essay, War & Peace Project, I was concerned with the results. One young man, a difficult student, with hard-working, blue collar parents, wasn’t a determined worker, but would give me adequate pieces of writing to add to his portfolio. He chose to submit his poetry portfolio, which was to include five poems reflecting five styles,included one poem beautifully written in perfect Ebonics. I copied the first line into my search engine and found the entire poem and concluded that he thought I would not understand he was quite incapable of creating the vocabulary, meter and rhymes. As the kids say, “He was busted!”

At that time, the Internet was just starting to become the research tool of choice. I had a number of students who had computers at home and these computers, clever salespeople, included free CD Roms such as Encyclopeadias. It was great. The world was at their fingertips. I found, only too late, that they had no idea how to take notes, how to rewrite the work into their own words. I had to go back to square one.

I realized I had to scaffold the assignments. We began with a KWL chart. This is how we began our work on the Federal 2006 Election.

I used a Kidspiration graphic organizer, simply requiring students to come up with 3 or 4 main ideas and questions around the main topic. This accesses prior knowledge and allows the student to determine gaps in their understanding. As they work through the project have them add to the “Learned” column.

In this fashion I would know when the kids did their own work and did not copy it. Each day or two I would add another component to the assignment. On day 1 we would create a topic and determine a plan for our research. On day two I then assign the next task, demanding it be handed in and checked as their “ticket into the computer lab”. We need to make effective use of computers. As it is, time is limited and I ensure students are armed with a plan, guideline and are given specific goals and activities each visit. This keeps them on-track.

It was with some trepidation that I assigned a new project to my students. I like Jamie McKenzie’s work on questioning. Rather than giving students a large topic to pursue, he suggests that the student narrows down the topic and the main questions to be answered within the research.

His process outlines these steps:

1. QUESTIONING 2. PLANNING 3. GATHERING 4. SORTING & SIFTING 5. SYNTHESIZING 6. EVALUATING 7. REPORTING

Each step of the process demands accountability and predicts a successful outcome.

Follow it slowly and carefully with your students.

Putting the Question

When you are ready to put the question, have the students begin with their central question. Using a graphic organizer encourages open-ended brainstorming and increases the creativity factor. Kidspiration or SmartIdeas both have many simple tools to facilitate this process. There are many terrific teacher texts are available in the stores.

Guidelines

Create a learning environment in which students are eager to do independent and dependent research projects.
Practice what you preach and model academic values in your teaching practices.
Ensure that students know the difference between right and wrong.
Teach students about “intellectual property”.
Let them know that you are Netsavvy enough to find their work.
Teach them how to highlight information.
Clearly outline bibliographic rules.
Require students to submit rough notes and drafts
Scaffold assignments enough hat you have a clear idea of their approach and their abilities
Determine what it is that they are capable of achieving, teach to that goal, then add a few more steps to which more sophistaced students might master
Create a number of times and places, during the project, when you can examine their work.

"Ideally, we want students to do the work, so they learn. That's the intrinsic reward. Children, like adults, don't always perform for intrinsic rewards," says Wray Jose, Hawaii's history teacher of the year. "Students who don't have conscience -- or do, but feel the grade is more important, will change their tune fast if they find out there will be significant negative reactions for cheating." (Stolarz, 2005)

Wikipedia cites several sites from which students can buy essays.

‘CheatHouse.com, MyEssays.com, Valedictorian Essays, Tailored Essays, Go2Essay, ItchyBrainsCentral.com, Fast Papers, AcaDemon, Custom Research Papers, EssayToday, Essay Town Research Assistance, and Custom Essay Writing Service.’

Teachers must be aware of these sites and check suspiciously exemplary work by students. By scaffolding work, they will be able to determine if a student hands in something that is not their own. I am often pleased with the quality of my student's work, but never surprised. I know the quality of work that they might procuce and I culture it.

Parents needs help supervising the process. They needs guidelines and can be encouraged to help children create exemplary work.

For Parents

5 ways to decrease the odds your child will cheat:

1. Help your child begin a project.
2. Talk to your child and explain that cutting and pasting information from another web page is plagiarism.
3. Inform children of consequences.
4. Remind your scholars that cheating cheats them as well as their teacher.
5. Live by example. Parents who routinely cut ethical corners themselves are more likely to produce children who cheat.

Assessment: Research Rubric
Give students a clear idea of the expectations. Use rubrics thoughtfully and use them to encourage, scaffold and model the behaviours which you expect. The best-written rubrics demonstrate what it is that the student must do, how much must be done and how to organize the project. It lets them know how much effort is expected in terms of research, writing and participation strategies. Exemplary rubrics demonstrate the need for timeliness and articulates to the student the project requirements i.e. introduction, conclusion, bibliography, rough notes in an appendix -which helps keep them honest! The rubric should indicate that plagiarism will not be tolerated.
Graphics and pictures must be credited, this is explained and demonstrated by the classroom teacher. She must ensure that her sources are legal and do not violate copyright laws. “Practice what you preach” in this regard.

Bibliography
Jilks, J. (2006) Bibliography: www.jilks.com/biblio.htm/ On-line portfolio: www.jilks.com/portfolio

Module Maker –Jamie McKenzie’s planning guide from his site www.questioning.org

Stolarz, C. (2005). Schools' new target: cybercheaters: A Michigan districts crack down on Web-savvy students who think online plagiarism is OK. The Detroit News As accessed Jan. 22, 2006. http://www.detnews.com/2005/schools/0510/02/A01-334623.htm