Matthew C. Winner
Plagiarism
June 11, 2006
Recognizing and Preventing Plagiarism
at an Elementary Level
While
plagiarism is not often the topic of elementary school staff meetings, it is a
growing concern in schools across the country. Technology is making it even
easier for students to plagiarize. Effort must be made to help students
recognize examples of plagiarism, understand the consequences associated with
committing plagiarism, and know how to avoid plagiarism when creating original
works.
Plagiarism.org
reports the following statistics:
A national survey published
in Education Week found that 54% of students admitted to plagiarizing from the
internet; 74% of students admitted that at least once during the past school
year they had engaged in "serious" cheating; and 47% of students
believe their teachers sometimes choose to ignore students who are cheating.
Plagiarism and the
Internet:
With
the help of any number of Internet sources, students can download term papers
or pay to have one doctored to meet their specific requirements. Fortunately
for teachers, most of these papers cite outdated sources and contain errors in
grammar, diction, or relevance. In other cases, students simply don’t
know the correct way to cite resources in written works or are unaware of what
actions are considered acts of plagiarism.
Some examples of plagiarism (as defined by Plagiarism.org)
include:
- copying
words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
- failing
to put a quotation in quotation marks; giving incorrect information about
the source of a quotation
- changing
words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
- copying
so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your
work, whether you give credit or not
How We Can Help:
Though
plagiarism is more prevalent in high school and college, we can intervene at
the elementary level by educating our students in ways to recognize and prevent
plagiarism.
There are a number of ways to be proactive about stopping
plagiarism in the classroom:
- Discuss plagiarism with your
students. Talk about why we give credit to original sources and
the effects of using someone else’s words as your own.
- Model the use of citation in your
class. Cite your student’s work when showing
outstanding examples or quotes. Use quotation marks in your writing and
cite the source of the quote. This practice can help making citation a
more natural process.
- Strengthening work through
research. Plagiarism should not scare students away from research.
Avoid this potential mishap by encouraging students to use professional
resources to strengthen their work. Evidence of research is evidence of a
well-supported thought.
- Educate your students! Allow
your students to investigate plagiarism on their own by exploring the
website What is
Plagiarism?.
This site is maintained by Kids Health magazine and teaches students about
plagiarism including the consequences and how to avoid it.
(http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/school/plagiarism.html)
Additional Resources:
For
more information on plagiarism, please visit:
Plagiarism.org –
Plagiarism.org is an online resource for people who want to know more about
plagiarism, how to detect it and how to prevent it. The site contains a number
of student and teacher resources to help teach and prevent plagiarism.
(http://plagiarism.org/)
Date visited: 06/11/06
For
web-based plagiarism detection services, please visit:
TurnItIn
– Turnitin.com is a fee-based plagiarism detection service
through which colleges, schools, offices, or individuals register for a
license. The client can then access a number of plagiarism detection services
in addition to a number of great web-based teaching and grading tools.
(http://turnitin.com/static/index.html)
Date
visited: 06/11/06