We have a somewhat frustrated Beth tonight. She is marking a batch of coursework from one of her classes – the task being to produce a film review. Four young gentlemen have had a startling improvement in their use of language, so she’s googled the contents of their reviews – one is a complete match to a review on Amazon, another is a lift from the LA Times, with another taking paragraphs from the Film4 site. Suffice to say that four young gentlemen are going to get a very nasty surprise tomorrow morning…
Do Kids Think Adults are Stupid?
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lol – that’s great. Maybe kids assume that adults can’t figure out how to work the internet.
please tell us how they respond!
Okay, Beth has just told me about her lesson with the class today.
She started off by playing the Graham Norton Stand Up Sit Down game with the class.
Question one – Sit down if you think it is acceptable to copy parts of your coursework off the internet? – Nobody sits down.
Question two – Sit down if you know what plagiarism means. – One or two people sit down.
Question three – Sit down if you can honestly say that one hundred percent of your coursework is your own work and you have not copied any of it from the internet. – Six people remain standing, one of the people who has been copying has sat down, the other three are still stood up, plus three more.
The one of the four who has sat down maintains that the report is all his own work – unfortunately he is unable to explain what some of the phrases he claims to have written actually mean, and eventually admitted that he did copy too. The other three who have remained standing admit that they looked up reviews of the films for background, but rewrote some of the points in their own words.
After that, the four young gentlemen went out to face the head of department, followed by their head of year, followed by the head of key-stage and the deputy head.
It is worth bearing in mind that had Beth not caught them out, if the examination board had then spotted the problem, the boys entire English folders would have been declared void, losing a sizeable chunk of their English grade, and the board could well have gone over their coursework for all their other subjects too…
The four young gentlemen returned to Beth and spent their lunchtime working on a new film report for a different film, and all of them are going to have to hand write a new report ready for the end of half-term.
Also worth noting that all four ‘gentlemen’ have also been issued with after school detentions for their misdeeds. Today, one of them came to ask me if he could do his on another day, as HE HAD A HAIR APPOINTMENT! Needless to say, my reply was not polite…