Amazing

**catnapper** · 03-10-2005, 05:46 PM

Hubby had a project for Black history Month that he made his 7th and 8th grade classes do. Only half the kids handed the projects in - its only two pages double spaced about a famous black person, and he gave them classtime to work on it.

Anyway, he's thoroughly disgusted with the attitudes of his classes about not wanting to do any work. I offered to help him grade the papers. He told me that anybody that handed a paper in, as long as it made *some* sense to go no lower than a B. If it was utter trash, a C-. Is worth 40% their final grade and he desperately need high grades here to pass a lot of kids.

I've been reading these papers, and let me tell you, they are so well written that even I couldn't come up with some of the sentence structure. Thats not to say I think I'm a literary giant or anything, but I definately don't expect 7th graders coming up with them.

I just had one paper that had important terms underlined. I thought "hmmm... these look like they are underlined because they are links" So I logged into google and typed the first sentence. Sure enough, the first entry was word for word for word the whole paper. OKKKkkkkkkk... he's got a zero for plaigiarism. I decided to pick up the pile of A's that seemed fishy to me and typed first sentences in... out of 10 papers so far, 8 are word for word from a website. Sigh. Depressing.

I printed out each site, stapled it to the papers, marked them with zeroes for plagiarism. Hubby just told me to also mark them all with a note syaing "Rewrite in own words and return monday"

Sigh... he's desperate to pass these kids. I think they should all get the zeroes and a teacher detention for trying to cheat.

**Karen** · 03-10-2005, 05:48 PM

Does your husband's school belong to ithenticate.com - or turnitin.com? I forget which is for what level of schooling, but they're run by the same place, you just copy and paste or type in the story, and it'
ll come back if even one sentance is plaigiarized. It is invaluable in publishing.

**catnapper** · 03-10-2005, 05:50 PM

I think they are. He was talking about it a while back. But this is so obvious -- all I have to do is type in the first sentence!

It would have never occured to me as a kid to simply rewrite everything exactly as the source had it.

**Karen** · 03-10-2005, 05:53 PM

You're giving them too much credit, unless it's handwritten, they're probably copying and pasting. Plaigiarism is a serious issue, and could get them expelled from some high schools. It is also a black mark on your school record, and their permanent records should be flagged warning future teacher to be wary of this. If he feels that's too strong, he could at least mention that that's what would happen, but he's giving them a second chance.

**catnapper** · 03-10-2005, 06:17 PM

OMG... I just found one where the kid just printed out the website and handed THAT in as his paper, complete with the web address on the top of the paper and ads!