Plagiarism-Wordle Activity

For the second year I introduced the idea of plagiarism to 4th and 5th grade students by reading the book, When Marion Copied: A Book About Plagiarism by Brook Berg. After reading the book I explained that I wanted them to practice a strategy mentioned in the book.  I asked them to summarize the book using only 5 words.  They write them on an index card (or scratch paper) along with their name.  I later type in each word they write into Wordle (www.wordle.net).  I also type in the title, When Marion Copied several times so that it also appears. If you have never used Wordle, check it out.  It is an interesting way to look at text and play with words.  The more often a word appears in a text the larger it appears in Wordle or word cloud (that's why I type in the title, so that it appears (large) in the Wordle).

Here is one wordle I created using the 5 summary words written by students.

You can see the above Wordle by using this link: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/6087046/When_Marion_Copied