Note: This year I am blogging weekly reflections at my school site (weskids.com) in order to provide more transparency in my teaching for parents, students, and the community (local and global). I will be cross-posting most of the entries here at Bit By Bit as well. You can see the original posts at the “Reflections by Mr. S” blog.

______________________________________________

This week, we’ve been moving into a lesson on Copyright with the 3rd/4th graders that comes from the excellent site, Common Sense Media. You can find the original lesson here: http://bit.ly/1kCoKYU.

3rd and 4th graders have already heard a lot about Copyright during our lessons, but it is not an easy concept to grasp, and certainly needs repeated teaching. In fact, Copyright Law is often difficult to interpret: I’ve been to many workshops on Copyright over the years, and there are always questions that arise from the participants that can’t quite be answered by the presenters… There are a lot of “gray areas” in interpreting the laws, and not always clear answers.

However, we can all agree that “Plagiarism” is wrong. Students have been hearing this for a long time. So why does it still take place all the way up to college levels? (check out THIS interesting article!)

This week, rather than write to you about how I set up the lesson’s “hook” (to engage interest), I thought I would show you (via video) how I started the discussion of Copyright and Plagiarism. In viewing the video, you may notice a few things that I’d like to address:

• I’m talking really fast. Remember, this is the “hook” part of the lesson and I could only give it the 12 minutes that it took.
• I’m talking a lot. There are indeed a few lessons (such as this one), where I talk more than I’d like to the students. Usually, I set them up with their lessons and get them on the computers quickly.
• Students initially fall for the “trick.” When we question “Why?” we must take into account (as I discuss briefly in the video) that part of “falling for the trick” is because I am their teacher who they are used to trusting. It would be interesting to see them view the “hook” from a stranger and see if they agree with that person’s methods of plagiarizing.
• And finally, I wish that I kept filming because students were very engaged in carrying out the rest of the discussions and activities.

And now, the video:

What Does Plagiarism Look Like? from wells elementary on Vimeo.

Things you can do with your student at home:

• Note: your scholar may not have had the lesson yet, so try not to give away the “hook” if you can!
• But, even if your student hasn’t had the lesson yet, you can still talk to him/her about the words plagiarism and copyright and ask what they know about them.
• You could work on reading a nonfiction article or book with them and then model how you would retell it using your own words—only looking back at the text to check your facts.
• You could show them Internet sites or articles that show citation or books that include a bibliography.