Teachers, prevent plagiarism in your classroom.
Teach students exactly plagiarism is and how to avoid it. Teach reading, writing,and research strategies that will help them get their paper done without copying the information straight from their sources.

Many students do not understand the principle of ownership and copyright law. Teach them that information out there is not free for the taking. Any published information is the work of the author, and as such, must be paraphrased and cited, giving credit for the author's work.

A Power Point presentation is a good way to teach what students can and cannot do when using information from another source. Be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to plagiarism but planning and implementing an all-out campaign to teach ways to write essays and papers without plagiarizing. Slides in a Power Point presentation skills can cover copyright law and citations very effectively. The slides can be designed with the students' age or grade level in mind.

In days gone by, it still took some effort for a student to copy passages out of an encyclopedia for a term paper or essay. Today, it is far easier thanks to the magic of "copy and paste" in a word processing program. It is time for an all-out campaign to teach students how to read informational text, to incorporate it into their work, and to cite sources.

This all-out campaign means teaching students what they CAN do, not just what they CAN'T do. Talk to your colleagues and convince them that teaching research skills is not solely the English teacher's job. Teachers in all subjects, not just English, must build time into their curriculum to address plagiarism by showing students effective learning strategies to read informational text, to paraphrase and summarize, and to locate multiple print and electronic sources on a given topic.

Skills of reading informational text, note taking, paraphrasing and citations can be taught so that students learn what they CAN do to gather information and put it to use without plagiarizing.

Learn more about this author, E.M.Robinson.
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