8th graders and plagiarism

The 8th graders have a World War II unit in which they are allowed to choose any topic they wish concerning World War II. We, myself, the special ed teacher (she pushes her students into my class for the assignment), and the librarian spend numerous amounts of time explaining paraphrasing, plagiarism, and citations. Unfortunately, after all of these class periods, we still receive a handful of papers that are plagiarized. I often question, what did we do wrong in presenting the information to the students? or Are they they just too "lazy" to write when copying and pasting is so easy? or Do they not have enough confidence in themselves to think that they can write a good paper? I actually asked my students one day which it was. The majority answered that they were not confident in themselves or their writing. I am amazed that even with the amount of "practice" writing and citing that we do, that they still do not feel comfortable with their citations. So, I believe the next step is for me to help instill some confidence in my students and their ability to write a term paper. I plan on starting with baby steps and working up to their term paper. Any suggestions in building confidence would also be greatly appreciated.