Teacher Tip 2: Colored Staples

In this quick one minute video I explain two different ways colored staples can make your life easier! 


For those of you who prefer reading here it is:

Pre-Step For some reason my stapler kept getting taken. I am not sure if other teachers or students thought it was theirs or if or custodial staff would toss it. However, once I covered my stapler in stickers, the disappearances stopped! In fact, the few times I have forgotten it in a classroom students have brought it back to me in my office! If any of your supplies are escaping I'd suggest decorating it, so that people know it is yours :)

Step 1
Load your stapler with two different colors. If you are on a budget, and colored staples are a luxury, then load the stapler mostly with the standard silver staples and put the colored staples at the very end. I used green here. This way when I am stapling and I hit the green staples, I know I need to, "go" and get more staples because I am about to run out.

That's it! With the use of colored staples you'll never end up staple-less again!
  
Alternative Use:
As I mentioned in this blog post about cheating, one way to cut down on students copying during tests is to pass out different versions. I've met many teachers mark their versions differently. They can use different colored paper, write different versions on the top of the test, have a different picture on the front page, etc. One way I like to differentiate tests is by using different colored staples. This way it is fast for me to see the difference between a blue stapled test and a green stapled test, but harder for students. If they aren't sure what test their neighbor has, they may be less inclined to lean over and look at their neighbor's answers.

There you are: two different ways that colored staples make my life as a teacher easier.

What about you? What office supply most simplifies your life as a teacher?

What's the one office supply that saves you time while preparing for classes?

Top 10 best excuses for cheating

All of these excuses are real and from my classes (unless noted otherwise as with the guest contribution or excuses found on Twitter).

10. "We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat." Not from my class rather the chant at the recent Gaokao riot.

9. "I was seeing how far he got so I could pace myself." When I give tests I have a gigantic countdown on the board and make sure to verbally give reminders (You should be halfway through by now, etc.), so, this one doesn't fly for me.

8.

#ExcusesForCheating How dare you excuse me of cheating on this test. I was just practicing dramatic head turns. I might be on a soap opera.
— BenJAMMIN Sprengeler (@ben_sprengeler2) October 23, 2012

I love the creativity of this one. I know it is two years old, but still awesome.

7.

#ExcusesForCheating you didn't get a chance to study for your test because you were busy saving the world from a zombie apocalypse.
— Brianna Lucey (@BriannaLucey) October 23, 2012

Again! If a student at least can make me smile, I'll be less likely to take the test away.

6. "Yolo" - This one comes from Lillie  The "You only live once," mantra is often used now by teenagers with no other valid excuse.

5. "I just got nervous." Nerves can be a serious problem. It is one reason I like to give different tests. That way if a student gets nervous fidgeting around it is OK.

4. "I wasn't cheating; I was just making sure they were right." How kind of you.

3. "I was stretching." There's stretching, and there's blatantly looking at your neighbor's desk. Nice try though.

2. "I was making sure my answer was right." Well, this is more believable than number 4, it is still considered cheating.

and my ultimate favorite

1. "But teacher I don't know any of the answers." Oh...well why didn't you say so. In that case of course you can look at your neighbor's paper.

How to prevent cheating during tests? This post on cheating during tests  has lots of suggestions!

What about you? What's the most creative excuse your students ever gave you when you saw them trying to cheat during an exam.

Cheating in your class (WRITING)

Even SpongeBob struggles with starting

Why do students plagiarize? Maybe I’m naïve, but I believe it is because many times they don’t know how to use sources properly. Another common reason is they don’t know where to start. Moreover, when students don’t manage their time well and leave the entire essay for the night before, plagiarism is an easy answer.

Some teachers don't worry about their students plagiarizing because they use a plagiarism checker. However, these only punish plagiarism; they don’t prevent it. As an analogy, they’re like seat belts; they don’t prevent accidents, but they do help if an accident occurs.

Plagiarism checkers are also pretty useless against bought essays. If these are well written, they don’t show up as plagiarized. Lucky for teachers, often these aren’t well written and are sold to more than one student. Those do show up as plagiarized via plagiarism checkers.

How do we keep students honest? If a student really wants to cheat, they will find a way to cheat. However, you can scaffold your class so that in the end writing the essay is easier than cheating!

This schedule is made up of ten days, but you can combine days.

In my classes we practice grammar, literature and essay writing, so these days aren’t back to back.

Before you start, tell students they should save EVERY assignment as each assignment is due with the draft and final copy.

DAY ONE- The assignment. We go over the requirements, multiple deadlines, and write a few sample theses as a class. HOMEWORK Come up with a good thesis statement and a few prospective topic sentences. 

DAY TWO-Finding a good source.  This lesson focuses on good sources versus bad sources. We cover the basics as well as the exceptions. By now, you should have looked over their thesis statements and said whose was a good start and whose needed work. If some need work offer them the chance to change it now. Homework: Find a good source that is about your topic. It doesn’t need to completely support your opinion, but it should be a GOOD source in English. Bring in a photocopy of the cover page and a random page if it is a hardcopy or online in PDF. Print one page of the article if it is an electronic source (include the URL and author). LAST CHANCE to change theses.

DAY THREE- Citation. I take this lesson to discuss why plagiarism is bad. We look at current pop culture examples of plagiarism and the punishments. How to prevent this? Attribute your sources. Show parenthetical citation, in text citation and a Works Cited page. Homework: Have them find another source in English and make a Works Cited page with their two sources.

DAY FOUR- Quoting. Teach your students WHEN to quote and more importantly when NOT to quote. Show them how to integrate a quote into a paragraph. Advise them AGAINST translating something from another language into English and then quoting it. Homework: Find another good source in English. Find something to quote from two of the three sources. Write sample sentences integrating them into a real sentence AND using parenthetical and in text citation (one each). Add the new source to your Works Cited page.

DAY FIVE- Paraphrasing- MAKE SURE they know that paraphrasing needs to be attributed. Often they feel since the words are theirs now they don’t need to give credit. Point out It is AWESOME to use when they find something useful in their L1 (mother tongue).  Homework: Find another good source in any language and paraphrase it (make sure to use in text or parenthetical citations). Add the new source to your Works Cited page.

DAY SIX- Summarizing. Again, MAKE SURE they attribute when summarizing. It also a GREAT option to use if they find something useful in their L1. Homework: Find another good source in any language and summarize it (make sure to use in text or parenthetical citations). Add the new source to your Works Cited page.

DAY SEVEN- Outline. I like doing this in class, but you can assign it as homework. I discourage using full sentences for the main ideas and details unless it is one of the quotes, summaries or paraphrases they’ve already submitted.

DAY EIGHT- Peer Review. I also like to do these in class, but sometimes there’s no time. In that case it becomes extra credit. I put up worksheets for peer reviews that walk them through a series of questions (Is every quote integrated? Is the thesis specific? Is the Works Cited page on a separate page? Etc.) If they swap papers with a classmate and review the other person’s essay, I give then some extra credit. I find these are more effective than self-reviews.

DAY NINE- Draft. Some teachers don’t collect drafts; I do. Be sure to collect EVERYTHING with the draft. This way you can see the progression of your students’ thoughts. Run anything that looks iffy through a plagiarism checker. Otherwise be sure to pay close attention to attributions as well as essay structure and grammar.

DAY TEN- Final. I make final essays optional. If a student is happy with their grade on the draft, I transfer the draft grade to their final essay grade. This saves me the hassle of writing, “You didn’t change ANYTHING” on a final essay and getting cranky. If a student wants to fix their essay and improve their grade, they turn in a final copy (again with EVERYTHING).

Grading: How do I give a grade? I usually put everything towards the essay grade. For example: Each good source, paraphrase, summary, quote goes into “Essay Preparation”

Essay Preparation- 5%

Peer Review- 5%

Outline- 15%

Draft- 25%

Final- 50%

The scale is designed so passing is easily achieved and students have to do the work along the way if they want a great grade.

Regardless of how you break down the grade, be sure students have this on DAY 1 when you give the assignment.

Each of these topics will be covered with an in depth idea of how to teach each of these days during the month of July.

How do you prevent plagiarism on assignments?

Cheating in your class (PLAGIARISM CHECKERS)

Clearly plagiarized brochure

Facebook Status

My high school students do this great  TBL project involving tourism. The assignment varies each year, but in short students are assigned a place (city, country, planet) and they have to sell the rest of the class on going there. In lieu of an essay, they create a brochure.

Above, you can see one of the brochures. On March 6th 2012, I posted to my personal Facebook, "OK, I know everyone has probably plagiarized at least once in their life...but could my students at least do it well??? 'Apart from a feast of dreamy, palm fringed snow white beaches,' is not your own words."

Less than an hour later a friend commented with, "Was it just those words, or was the whole text about Fiji?"

Now, I never stated the text was about Fiji. My friend did what I had done and Googled the line to discover the website my students copied. (The website they used http://www.holidaypackages.com.au/fiji/ is no longer a valid site). Three of the paragraphs on this site were copy and pasted directly onto their brochure. All of the yellow highlighting in the brochure above is word for word the same (feel free to click on the picture to see it bigger).

This plagiarism was pretty easy to spot. I knew these students well enough to know that they wouldn't use the phrase, "feast of dreamy, palm fringed," so I popped it into Google and got a direct hit.

Another way that teachers prevent cheating is by using a service such as TurnItIn. If your school pays for this then I'd suggest you give it a shot (it can't hurt!), but if you are looking for some more affordable alternatives here are 10 free sites, and 2 kinda free sites that check for plagiarism.

Mostly Free

These offer most of their services for free although some offer premium paid accounts with more bells and whistles.

1. Viper is nice because it also uploads students essays. This means in addition to online texts you are searching real student submitted essays. If you plan to use it as a teacher, be sure to get permission from your students to upload their essays (or arrange for them to do it themselves)! If you do not have their permission you may be breaching their privacy and opening yourself up to legal problems. You need to have Windows and download the program so it isn't as convenient as some other web based programs. Nonetheless, this is a great option for teachers (and students). Their website is available in Chinese, French, Spanish and Hindi, though the English version of the site has more options.
2. Plagtracker  says that you can check documents up to 5,000 words via copy and paste for free (premium accounts can upload a document and have no word limits), but, when I ran my first sample essay through, it only checked the first 892 words. The first essay you check you can see the results within a few minutes. After that if you submit a text, it goes in a queue. They ask for your e-mail and e-mail you when your report is ready (they estimate about 20 minutes). Two hours later I still had no reply, but by the next day I did get one. You can only check one document at a time without a premium account, so it would take a while if you wanted to check every essay your students submitted. However, if you normally only check one or two essays, then this wouldn't be too inconvenient. If you don't like waiting, you can pay their fees ($14.99/ month). It is designed to work with English, French, Spanish, German, Romanian and Italian. Since this doesn't use the essay later you don't need your students permission to submit it. As of June 2015, if you like them on Facebook they give you 20% off!
3. Small SEO tools This free tool was designed to help bloggers with their SEO score, but it can easily be used by teachers as well. Just input the text and see how much comes up as unique. The great thing is it will link to the site it found the information so you can see the original text. This is just copy and paste, no file upload option. The site is in English though since it mainly works off of search engines it will probably work well with any language.
4. Duplichecker is a free program with a maximum of 1,500 words per search. You can upload a document or copy and paste. You can run up to three free searches a day, or register (for free) and search as much as you like. Very easy to use.
5. SeeSources is now under the domain of plagscan. You can upload or copy and paste up to 1,000 words. I like this one because it runs two searches. First it finds sources that could have been used, and then looks at the way it was written to see if it matches anything.
6. Plagiarism Detect  admits to being a site which is not as great as it used to be, but for now it is pretty good to find if text was used from a website (but not pdfs or ebooks). You can copy and paste, or upload a document. Copying and pasting has a maximum of 1,000 words and uploading is a maximum of 300kB.
7. Dustball lets you copy and paste as many searches as you want. You can also upload a document, but then you need to pay a fee of $8/ month.  
8. Plagiarismsoftware runs your sentences through search engines sentence by sentence. Useful if you don't want to manually copy and paste a student's paper sentence by sentence, but not much better than just doing a web search on your own. You can also upload a document but only .txt files. There doesn't seem to be a file size issue, but it is a bit cumbersome to sort through larger texts.
   
9. Plagiarismchecker is essentially a site which sends your information to other search engines and then takes you to them. You can search up to 32 words via google or 50 words via yahoo. Good for teachers who aren't that tech savvy and don't want to go straight to a search engine
10. Plagiarisma is a free via copy and paste or you can upload the document to the site directly. I tried to run a search of 198 words and the site kept timing out, so I can't really comment on how effective it is. Perhaps you'll have better luck? 

 Not so free

These sites offer some services for free, but predominately are used with the paid options.

1. Grammarly is getting listed first because it checks grammar too (hence the name). They have a preview you can run if you like (which is great for just the occasional check). As a student this is great because it not only finds texts you forgot to paraphrase / quote, it suggests how you could properly cite it! You can get a 7 day free trial or just sign up for a plan (between $12-$24/ month for an individual account less if you team up with some other teachers and buy it together)
2. Plagium offers five free quick searches a day in English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, or Spanish. If you create a free account, you can run a few free deep searches with the 8,000 credits they give you. 60,000 units is $1.00 and estimated to be valid for about 10 searches. This is not my favorite site, but it is fine for a fast check if you do less than 5 a day. It lets you copy and paste text or upload a file.

Before you start let me give you a few tips.

1. Let your students know that you use a program, but DO NOT tell them which program you use.

2. Use a few and find your favorite. Plagiarism Checker.net gives reviews of different programs so you can look up their opinion as well.

3. Don't let the machine take away your common sense. For example one of the essays contained, "What else does the reader need to know" and that phrase popped up as plagiarism.  In that case it is probably just a popular phrase and not something copy and pasted.  

There are other ways to deter plagiarism but using these is a great start.

Do you use the Internet to check for plagiarism? Has it gone well for you? What's your favorite site? I'd love to know more about your reactions!

Cheating in your class (TESTS)

It has to be mentioned. Students cheat... I am sure this doesn't shock anyone, except for maybe some students who think they are being so stealthy that it isn't noticed.

Unless you've been living under a rock for a while you are aware of alternative students have to reading (spark notes, pink money, cliff notes, etc.)

This blog tries to:
1. Show some high profile cases of cheating
2. Discuss how teachers can prevent cheating.

We live in a testing generation. These tests do more than just give scores; they determine schools' budgets, reinforce a school's reputation, and limit a student's opportunities. This isn't JUST in America. Sure, we have the SAT to get into college, but China has the Gaokao, Japan has the Center Shiken, and Korea has the Suneung tests which in many cases give even more pressure than the SAT.

For example, just last month there was a riot at a Chinese school holding the Gaokao. Essentially  in the past reports of cheating had been too high, so this time the students were scanned for cell phones, transmitters, etc. After the test they protested. Their logic? Everyone else cheats, so if they can't it isn't fair.

The May 2013 SATs were cancelled in Korea because copies of the test were obtained and distributed. They were selling for exorbitant prices. The college board, in an attempt to save the integrity of the SAT cancelled the test.

And I think we can all remember the Atlanta Cheating Scandal where teachers falsified students answers on tests to increase the schools' scores.

The point is cheating is out there. What's the best way to prevent your students form cheating? Don't give them a test. Now, I am not saying testing should be done away with completely, but often times one test determines 50% of a grade. Is that really fair? Is there another way you could evaluate your students. Dynamic assessment is an option. I still give final exams, but they are worth 20% not 50%. There is also a final project which shows they can do everything we covered in class and the rest of their classwork.

Before you give a test consider, "Am I doing this to punish?" "Am I doing this because it is a habit?" "Am I doing this because it is required by my school?" or "Am I doing this because it is the best way to check comprehension." If a test isn't the best move, see if you can try something else. If a test is the best move, then consider the following suggestions.


PREVENT CHEATING BEFORE THE TESTS

1. Give them confidence!
• Do practice tests that are in a similar format as the test so they won't be overwhelmed by a new format.
• Make sure the study guide has things which apply to the test!
• Ask them to help you make questions. This is a great study tool AND they will feel more empowered when they take the test as they see the students have helped create the content, not just the teacher. 

PREVENT CHEATING DURING TESTS

1. Be strict



Don't let this happen in your class.

• Prohibit most items. There will always be ways around the rules, but students are less likely to cheat if you have established yourself as a teacher who cares about the integrity of the test. So don't allow baseball caps. Make all backpacks sit at the front of the class. Do not allow watches (project the time left on the board with online stopwatch). 
• Seriously, prohibit most items. Keep in mind that students can write on anything, water bottles, erasers, the bottom of their shoes, the inside of their skirts etc. You shouldn't give them a full pat down before entering but prohibiting things like drinking from water bottles or sharing erasers will help (plus they really do need to come prepared to class with their own erasers).
• Make a seating chart or move students around once they have seated. I like making a seating chart because then later you can see who sat next to who and compare their answers. If you don't make a seating chart add a few lines to the top of the paper:
  Left Seat _________ Name: _______________ Right Seat: ___________ This way the student knows that you can monitor who they sat by, and they will be less likely to copy off that student.  
• Some teachers prohibit bathroom breaks. I understand the reasons, but I have never felt comfortable telling a student they can't use the facilities. I allow it, but I do make a note of it for later.
2. Make different test versions
• The easiest way is to just put the pages in a different order. Of course students could realize this and simply flip through their tests until their test matches their classmates, but it may prevent some.
• Another way to do this is just to move the questions around on the paper. This way all the students have the same questions, but not in the same pattern (making cheating tougher).
• An alternative for multiple choice questions, or matching questions is to keep the questions the same and change the order of the answers. 
• Finally you can ask the same questions but switch out the main words. Instead of, "In an introductory paragraph the first sentence is usually called the ________________" on another test it would be, "In a body paragraph the first sentence is usually called the ______________." This is easier for some tests and areas (math for example can ask the same question and just change the numbers).
• Some teachers don't actually make different versions they just pretend to. They print the tests on different colored paper, or mark different symbols on the front of the test to make students think they can't cheat. This may work for some classes, but I never fell for it as a student, so I don't know why your students would.
• For ALL of these methods make sure that you monitor where the papers get passed. If you do the "take one pass it down routine" students can easily grab the same test as the person sitting next to them.
3. Ask short answer or essay questions
• The following is pretty easy to copy: _________ is the main character in "The Gift of the Magi."  It also isn't a great question. It shows the student can recall, but does it show comprehension? Asking questions higher on Bloom's taxonomy will get you a better idea of what the student really knows and make it harder to copy. 
4. Use a smaller font
• I don't use this technique but Eric Martel did. When the font is smaller, it makes it harder for the student sitting further away to read answers (and find out if they have the same question).
5. Watch them
• I know this seems like a given, but some teachers don't keep the best watch on students. I know some teachers who leave the room in the middle of a test. Others  use this time to grade. I understand this, but be sure you are still paying attention to the class. 
• Some teachers find walking around helps, and it can, but be sure to be random (and don't wear heels). 
• I find standing in the back works best for my classrooms as they can't see me and assume I am watching them. Some teachers go elsewhere for a better vantage point. This probably isn't needed, but it is nice to see teachers give 100%
6. Give them confidence!
• Draw a big smiley face on the board! 
• I find that a lot of my students get nervous and start looking around the classroom just to try to find some confidence. The happy face makes them laugh a bit and focus on that instead of another students test. So give it a shot. Draw a big happy face and write, "You can do it!" or "Don't worry be happy" on it.
7. When in doubt  consider drastic measures
• OK, I don't actually suggest you put students in their own private box (like below), but it is an option.

There we go! In short, contemplate alternatives to the test, prepare yours students for the test, and be aware during the test! What deterrent do you use to prevent cheating during tests?