Paraphrasing and Plagiarism

For the month of April our second and third graders will be working on paraphrasing chunks of written information so that they are not plagiarizing. We first discussed that when we copy a written work word for word, that is called plagiarism and it is actually against the law. So, in order to make sure that we are not plagiarizing within our own writing, we then talked about how we can paraphrase instead. We discussed how paraphrasing is when we take a chunk of writing and we put that writing into our own words. We went through a few examples of paraphrasing together until students understood exactly what they were supposed to do. Students were then placed in partner pairs, given an iPad and a piece of paper, and they were given instructions to research a specific state within the United States. Students used a website called Kiddle (a student form of Google) to safely research their specific state. Of course, before they did their research on their own, we also discussed how to decide which link to click on in order to get the information that they are looking for. Students were given approximately 15 minutes to research their state and paraphrase the information that they discovered on their piece of paper. After their research was done, each partner pair had the opportunity to share the information that they wrote about their state. Students loved having the chance to research a state of their choice and then teach the rest of the class about their specific state. Below are a few pictures of students as they worked through this activity!