Preventing Plagiarism

Signs of Plagiarism

·         Quality of work does not match the students ability level (Royce, n.d.)
·         The vocabulary in the document does not seem to match the child’s
·         Failure to cite evidence (Royce, n.d.)
·         Missing information in citations (Royce, n.d.)
·         Hyperlinks in paper

Ways to Avoid Plagiarism in the Classroom

·         Make students quote all sources
·         Use appropriate citations to model for students
·         Encourage students to rephrase or paraphrase information
·         Teach students  how to summarize and highlight important information
·         Allow children access to a dictionary and thesaurus
·         Inform students of the consequences of plagiarism (school policy, state, federal crimes)
·         Teach children APA and MLA  formatting
·         Have students hand in important papers on TurnItIn.com,  which is a website that compares students text with the web. It highlights phrases in question of plagiarism and provides a percentage of the work that was seems to be copied from the internet and print sources.
·         Do random checks on children’s sources to see if they match up
·         Have strict consequences for breaches in plagiarism

How to Handle Plagiarism

·         Depends on the severity of what is copied
·         Talk with the student to get their side of the story
·         Collaborate with other professionals to see if the work exemplifies plagiarism
·         Do not accuse or make false accusations before you find out the facts about the students sources
·         Do not give the student credit for the work
·         Document the actions
·         Involve enforcement when necessary

Sources

·         Royce, J. (n.d.). Detecting plagiarism. Robert College. Retrieved March 2, 2011, from http://portal.robcol.k12.tr/Default.aspx?pgID=130

·         My own personal experiences