AS related school work question

[thriftychic]

ds2 (14) has had issues a plenty when asked at school to research a particular subject and then write about it in his own words .
what he does is just copies and pastes from the internet . He was given a 20 minute detention he says (could be a dodgy version of the truth tho) today when the IT teacher thought thats what he was doing (he prob was)
Is this something that would be difficult for someone with aspergers ? how so ?

unfortunately he is also very unmotivated at school and with anything really , he does the absolute bare minimum and a slap dash job of everything and im not sure what is lazy and selfish with him or aspergers . I am going to ring school tomorrow but before i do can anyone give me any insight ?

ds1 (10 year old Aspergers) is quite obsessive about not doing this but he has listened to his mother complaining when her degree level students do this. Whether his twin would do anything would be dependant on if he was interested in the subject - varies from nothing to epics. Neither can see the point of neat presentation which is particularly irritating for ds1 as he is very good at drawing when he wants.

Given the amount of plagiarism detection that goes on at university I think it is a problem for all students, although obviously particularly so for people with AS. I've found even with DS2 who is 6 he reads something and then can regurgitate it word for word onto the paper an hour or so later.
It is something that I have been working on with DS1 (11) he doesn't find it easy but is improving. We have been looking at making sure he has to write the info in a different way to where he got it from e.g. if info is in text he has to put it it into a table or vice versa.

I have started teaching Dd3 about this and explaining to her that she must put in brackets at the side of the quote where she found it.

I am lucky that she is quite rule bound so hopefully by teaching her that she cant use it as her own work now she will get the message.

As for putting things into her own words, she hasnt learned that skill yet.

She is 10 and has Asd.

Ds (14) has enormous difficulty with expressing his own opinions and rephrasing something he's been taught into his own words. He is a perfectionist and finds it incredibly hard to commit his thoughts to paper unless he's certain it will be brilliant. It takes huge effort to get any work out of him and he needs 1-1 support to make it happen. Fortunately we home educate to give him what he needs, but I can imagine that he'd use a similar method to get around the thinking element if he was in a school and under pressure to come up with something.

Your last paragraph rings bells very loudly! Because the thinking and expressing task is so challenging, ds will do anything to avoid it and he too lacks motivation because everything is such an enormous task for him. I'd say this is certainly a possible factor in your son's autism and you should bring it to the school's attention so they can know not to punish him for it but try to find ways of supporting him. Don't forget though - you can be lazy AND autistic - the two aren't mutually exclusive .

just popping back to say thanks for the input

I'm a teacher, and I do as LittleMissGreen suggests - I ask pupils to put the information into a different format. Anything else, and the temptation to C&P is just overwhelming, IME.

Even though my Ds is only 8, this thread is very interesting.

Written work is a particular PITA at the moment for my Ds AS....actually it has been since yr1, He said he just can't do it (it's too hard/too much) if its creative writing or if it is answering a question from a passage he copies the answers (very slowly) word for word from the text he has read. Which makes a lot of sense now by what streaky has written.

Sorry, I'm not very helpful as always. I will toddle off now and do my chores..