plagiarism Archives - Teaching ELA in the Middle https://teachingelainthemiddle.com/tag/plagiarism/ and living life one day- and book- at a time Tue, 21 Feb 2023 23:32:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 https://i0.wp.com/teachingelainthemiddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Black-with-Book-Shelf-Icon-Education-Logo.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 plagiarism Archives - Teaching ELA in the Middle https://teachingelainthemiddle.com/tag/plagiarism/ 32 32 194908938 How do you handle plagiarism in the classroom? https://teachingelainthemiddle.com/how-do-you-handle-plagiarism-in-the-classroom/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-do-you-handle-plagiarism-in-the-classroom Fri, 24 Feb 2023 08:41:00 +0000 https://teachingelainthemiddle.com/?p=325 Each year with the use of computers in the classroom, the temptation for students to copy and paste straight from the internet becomes greater. Many students don’t know how I can so quickly identify what is their work and what belongs to someone else. Most of the time it is as easy as looking at …

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Each year with the use of computers in the classroom, the temptation for students to copy and paste straight from the internet becomes greater. Many students don’t know how I can so quickly identify what is their work and what belongs to someone else. Most of the time it is as easy as looking at the formatting. When they paste it into their document, they fail to have the formatting match their original. Because of this, you have five different fonts with bolded words.

I can recall the day when I’d have to open my computer, go to Google, and type in a sentence to discover the source just to check if it was plagiarized. Of course, when reading, it is easy to identify those papers whose writer’s voice does not match previous work. It would be wonderful if students actually grew in their writing overnight, but alas, it doesn’t work that way. Now, I don’t bother to read if the font and formatting is all over the place.

Example of student's paper that has been plagiarized.
Two different fonts just gives it away!

Of course, now Word just allows us to go in and check the sources. It’s funny how students have not discovered this little hack. You can open it up in the editor, and it will show you how to fix it. It also shows teachers the exact website it came from. The paper above copy and pasted from 4 different websites, hence the different fonts.

The Editor tool in Word allows you to check similarities to other online sources.
Using the Editor tool in Word, you can check the similarity between the student’s paper and online websites.

How do you choose to handle it?

First and foremost, the student receives a zero. I could easily write the student up or have them serve a lunch detention, but instead I send home a letter with the following consequences: You have received a zero for your paper due to the fact that the paper has been plagiarized. Texts that are exactly like your paper were found on the following websites, and I have attached a copy. You have a choice. You will have five days to rewrite your paper or take the zero for a major grade. Turning in a second plagiarized paper will result in a discipline slip.

I have parents and students sign the letter. It is then kept as proof that I gave the student an opportunity to rewrite the assignment if a question of the zero happens to come up later. Most of the time, I never have another plagiarism incident from that student. And yes, I do check their work more frequently. Doing a search in Google with quotation marks around the query is a great way to get exact results fast.

I’m usually stumped by the fact that no matter how many times you teach them about plagiarism, students will still try to get around actually doing the work. They want to slap something on the paper and move on.

Is this something you see a lot of since technology is being used more? Let me know in the comments below.

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