[LM_NET] TAR: Help with plagiarized sources

[Alma McDermott <Sunshinealma@AOL.COM>]

An 8th grade teacher gave me 2 papers about Atticus Finch in To kill a  
Mockingbird that he feels are plagiarized because the students are not good  
students. I went to the LM_NET archives, where almost everyone suggested using  
Google with quotation marks, select words and/or phrases. I have done that  until 
my fingers have fallen off, but can't find any matches.
 
Since I am the new kid on the block at school, I'd like to make a good  
impression (I already found one that was taken from Wikipedia, but that was  easy 
since the student just made an exact copy - complete with the blue words  and 
scientific diagrams from the site; however, that teacher thought I was a  
genius for instantly recognizing the report as coming from a wiki.) 
 
Anyway, some of the sentences (there were many) that the teacher  highlighted 
were "He believes that racism is unacceptable and is a useless  and 
provocative emotion in society that needs to be dealt with the outmost [sic]  
fairness." Another one that raised his eyebrows was "Atticus's wise words didn't  
stop 
Scout from possessing problems, but they did corroborate [sic] the fact  that 
she would start making more sagacious decisions." In both sentences, the  
words that were spelled wrong hint that the student didn't know what they meant.  
Also, seeing "sagacious" in a sentence from this student was definite cause 
for  alarm for him, since he was sure the student didn't even know what it meant 
or  how to pronounce it.
 
We don't have Turnitin, and I haven't had any luck w/ Google and quotes.  
Does anyone have any other suggestions that I could use to find the source(s)?  
I'd appreciate any suggestions. I can't do it at school since alot of the sites 
 are blocked, so am working from home.
 
Thanks!
Alma
 
Alma Ramos-McDermott
Library Media Specialist 
Plymouth  Community Intermediate School (PCIS)
Plymouth, MA
ALA Spectrum Scholar  2006
sunshinealma@aol.com

AASL Legislation Committee  member
REFORMA's CAYASC Committee member
Spectrum Institute Committee  member
YALSA Diversity Campaign Taskforce member
YALSA liaision to  REFORMA



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