If you were a teacher...?

Fail.

Dinosaures may not have died out but they did evolve creatures like birds can trace their ancestory back to the dinosaures.

What the question regards to is the mass extinction of a number of dinosaur breds that occurred quite suddenly about 300-400 million years ago (the exact time scale escapes me). Both the question asker and the answerer missed the point; it is not a religious question despite the answerer's best efforts, and for that they would fail.

Okay, that is an example of an extremely naive girl led to believe the answerer because his use of external sites (rather than just an assiduous mind) makes him look legitimate. You wouldn't hand that back with a grade, you'd ask her to step in your office.

And - as for cheating - how? People need a source of knowledge, in the past people would have used libraries or encyclopaedias; today people use the internet. It is not a question steeped in logic, so a person can't be expected to simply engender the answer in their head on whim; or, by going out in to the field, collecting some fossils, and carrying out some radiometric dating - because even that would only collect data for the fossils in that region!

im not a teacher, but i did a really similar bit of science c/w a few months ago if that helps.... its not cheating- the idea of the coursework is to research the information you need, n then write an essay about that topic. As long as she didnt copy it word for word, and she made sure she sourced where she got the information from its fine. As for the grade, that would depend on what she actually wrote, n not where she got the info from

Surely the idea of setting homework is to allow/encourage the child to research? In which case you cannot penalise the child for using any reasearch tool she has to hand. Hopefully some of the knowledge she has gained will sink in and be retained.

In answer to your question I would look at the piece as a whole and grade accordingly

I hate to say this, but, as long as SHE wrote it, she's going to get the grade. I agree its "dubious" at best. How would a grade it? Just as if it were a standard paper. The one exception would be if this work was not like the rest of her work. If it was, shall we say, more sophisticated, then I'd start wondering. If she cut and pasted this, then she has some problems. If she used it as a basis for her paper, she's ok.

I haven't seen her work so I can't say what I would do if I didn't know. But if I did know what she had done I'd probably talk to her about it and refuse to mark her work until she has done it by herself. Coursework is Year 11 and very important and if you can't do it by yourself you wont survive in the real world.

it shows initiative in research, but it depends....

if she has read all the information available, then rewritten it in her own words, probably a B or C depending on the style of writing etc...

If she has merely copied and pasted it, then FAIL

Are you a teacher? She still did it. Cheating - but still done. The teacher would never know - unless your her teacher...