Group,
Thank you to everyone who sent me suggestions. The most idea most frequently
shared idea was....design the project so that copying is not possible. We have a
portion of the project that does indeed require synthesis of information. However,
there is also a portion of the project that is background information and this is
where we find blatent plagiarism. Students hear teachers talk about ways to avoid
it, but are not putting it into practice or do not have the skills to do it. We
want to improve summarizing and paraphrasing skills. Below are the suggestions I
received from LM_NETters. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to respond.
******************************
I work with the teachers to try to come up with
projects that are personalized enough to prevent
plagiarism. We've pretty much done away with those
reports that were just facts about.................
We're working with compare, contrast, personal
tie-ins, community issues.
And it's always repetition. I don't think most kids at
this level plagiarize on purpose. We talk to the kids
about what throws up the "red flags": unusual
vocabulary that is not defined, unlikely writing
style, etc.
******************************
The biggest one is to devise a project that won't lend itself to
copying. In other words, no "Everyone will do a report on a President",
etc. Construct a project that requires synthesis. Students must take
information and apply it to support an opinion or prove a thesis.
******************************
I teach 7th and 8th grades. In addition to Trash and Treasure and closing the book
and taking notes, we try to photocopy the pages from the books they use so they can
highlight important information before they take notes. We ask the students to
print out their Web pages and database articles, too. We teach them how to
highlight what's important. Then they set up an index card (I like to use 4x6 size)
with correct bibliographic citation at the top. They then take notes from the
highlighted information. They must not use full sentences; they must not copy the
highlighted text. They must use their own words. We have them hand in the
highlighted copies or printouts affixed to the notecard that goes with it, along
with a notecard rubric. The notecards and highlighted copies receive a grade. This
helps cut down on plagiarism because the students' sources are checked and we know
ahead of time where the information is coming from. We can help them avoid
inadvertent plagiarism and we can easily catch those who are copying and pasting
before we ever get to the final product stage.
******************************
Saw a real interesting plagarism discussion on BookTV with a lawyer and others.
see link.
http://www.booktv.org/General/index.asp?segID=8002&schedID=482
One thing brought up on the panel was the use of copying (plagiarism) in the
learning process and how it was acceptable in the past when $ was not the issue.
It takes most of us awhile to be able to move from copying to creating.
******************************
Teachers need to design assignments where kids need to "make decisions"-definitely
the higher level of thinking on Blooms' Taxonomy. Challenging questions, demanding
questions, essential questions if you will, will help to eliminate plagiarism. You
might want to consult Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe and Learning
to Question, To Wonder, To Learn by Jamie McKenzie should be helpful. In addition,
smaller projects with better design work better than larger projects on topical
research questions. I hope this is a helpful start. Good luck.
******************************
This might help
http://www.shambles.net/pages/staff/Plagiar/
a sub-section of the page at
http://www.shambles.net/plagiarism/
******************************
Just an idea, but maybe you can build on this scenario:
Use a familiar work such as "The Little Three Pigs." Read it and claim
that you are the author. Ask questions about why that would or would
not be good. Talk about how people earn their livings from the work
that they produce. You can go on from there...just an idea...
******************************
I think one of the best ways to prevent plagiarism is in the design of
the project. Make sure that any questions asked are not just low-level
regurgitation types.
Loertscher's Ban the Bird Unit book is excellent for this.
For biographical studies, I like to use questions such as
-how is this author/scientist, etc. like you?
-how is/was this person different from you?
-how would the world be different without this person's
discovery/invention, etc.?
******************************
Athough teaching strategies to avoid plagiarism is important, it is even
more important to design assignments that make it difficult to plagiarize to
begin with. Targeting the higher thinking levels, like analysing,
evaluating and comparing, takes the students beyond just the facts. Having
the students write in first person also helps. I would highly recommend
reading some of the articles written by James McKenzie in the
http://www.fno.org site. If you still do want to teach strategies, I would
suggest the CHoMP approach.
C- cross out the small words
H- highlight the important words
M- make notes based on the important words
P- put the information in your own words
I hope that helps!
******************************
Elementary school teachers are currently being trained in Marcia Freeman writing
techniques.
One thing she has students do is to pair up and one be the reader-speaker and the
other one be the listener-writer. The reader must read to himself and then look at
the listener while he retells the listener-writer what he read. Generally, a small
bit of text at first until they get use to reading for facts. Anything they can't
pronounce or say is probably not a good word choice for their notes anyway. After
practicing this several times and switching the roles the students understand to
look away from the text unless they need help spelling a word or checking for
facts. Hope this helps.
******************************
I've taught something I call a scrambled eggs approach. In fifth grade I had them
look at a short article from an on-line source. Then I showed how to mix up the
facts and shorten sentences. Ideally the result is information that is restated
but different. This avoided directly plagairizing, though it did not really get
children to synthesize the info. Results were fairly good, but I agree this is a
difficult lesson to teach.
******************************
I have them practice taking notes with the resource closed. When they are reading
the book is open or the computer screen is up. When they are writing or taking
notes the screen is on the dock, book is closed. I don't know how everyone else
feels but we actually practice doing this. This is the most important step,
engaging yourself with the text. Thinking about the information so you can use it
later. I ask them to read small chunks of information at a time. With six grade
we begin our research with a mock article and we practice this skill. Can I write
about this topic two weeks later with just my notes? we practice how we would
write it/ just using the notes from our class session.
******************************
My students at the college level (or, at least college age) who struggle most with
plagiarism are the ones who never learned to paraphrase. As you can imagine, this
is a problem in college! Many of them are not incapable of it - they simply don't
know how to do it.
******************************
Original Post:
Group,
How do you teach strategies for avoiding plaigarism? The problem seems to be out
of control in our 6th grade. We are aware of the "trash 'n treasure" method and
the closing book after reading and writing notes method, but what else do you use?
I will post a hit of replies. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
Linda
===============================
Mrs. Linda Slacum, Librarian
Cherry Hill Middle School
2535 Singerly Road
Elkton, MD 21921
lslacum@ccps.org
http://www.ccps.org/chms/index.html
http://media.ccps.org/ccemo/index.html
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