NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm a final year practicum student doing high school education and I want to teach a couple of lessons using the jigsaw approach. But I'm not 100 % sure on how it works. Is there anyone on NationStates who has used it, or who knows how it works that could explain it to me?

Jigsaws? EASY!

Break up the lesson into how ever many parts you want (usually I go with four as that's about how many parts a normal student group can handle). Divide the class up into groups with each group numbering the same amount of parts that you have. For complex lessons, you can assign two students per part.

Each group then breaks into sections with each section going to get that 'Part' of the lesson. After getting that part, the students return to their orginal groups and share the information with the other members. The groups then put all the information together (hence jigsaw) and make a presentation/report on it.

Example (I just taught this 2 months ago):
For an EFL class, 9th grade (US)/3rd year Junior High School (Japan).

Students were divided up into groups of four. They were told that they would be going on a year's study tour of one of four different countries (Nevada in the US, South Africa, Singapore, or Australia). Each group could choose just one country. Each group would send one student to the four information areas where they would listen to a report on that country in English then go back to their groups and share the information that they had learned (hopefully in English but I wasn't holding my breath). Each group would then compaire the countries and decide which one to go to and report to the class their decision and reason in English.

Does that help?

Wait, what? It's a request for help, and the first post is genuine?:eek:

Saint Jade, you are one blessed lady.

Wait, what? It's a request for help, and the first post is genuine?:eek:

Saint Jade, you are one blessed lady.
It's a teacher thing. ;)

Well, that and I was wondering if I could get my post in before someone made the obvious comment about putting puzzel pieces together. :D

Jigsaws? EASY!

Break up the lesson into how ever many parts you want (usually I go with four as that's about how many parts a normal student group can handle). Divide the class up into groups with each group numbering the same amount of parts that you have. For complex lessons, you can assign two students per part.

Each group then breaks into sections with each section going to get that 'Part' of the lesson. After getting that part, the students return to their orginal groups and share the information with the other members. The groups then put all the information together (hence jigsaw) and make a presentation/report on it.

Example (I just taught this 2 months ago):
For an EFL class, 9th grade (US)/3rd year Junior High School (Japan).

Students were divided up into groups of four. They were told that they would be going on a year's study tour of one of four different countries (Nevada in the US, South Africa, Singapore, or Australia). Each group could choose just one country. Each group would send one student to the four information areas where they would listen to a report on that country in English then go back to their groups and share the information that they had learned (hopefully in English but I wasn't holding my breath). Each group would then compaire the countries and decide which one to go to and report to the class their decision and reason in English.

Does that help?
Nevada is not a nation!

Nevada is not a nation!
Well, I was going to do the whole of the US, but given the SIZE of the US and the variation in weather (this was one of the listening points for the students) it was decided to have the AET (me) just go with his home state. The rest of the countries then went down to one particular city.

It's a teacher thing. ;)

Well, that and I was wondering if I could get my post in before someone made the obvious comment about putting puzzel pieces together. :D

Now I'm wondering why I didn't spam this thread first. I came in, read, left again, all without a bad joke. I am ashamed.

I have no idea ...

Jigsaws can be nice if you have a lot of information and you don't want to lecture the students. But you need to make sure they understand the information before taking it back to their smaller groups, otherwise they can end up spreading garbled information back to their fellow students. :p

I've seen a friend use it before to have students learn various sides of a debate, then they presented those debates in their small groups and wrote up a discussion of their debate and whose viewpoint they would finally side with and why. I've used it so students learned various viewpoints on Nuclear energy, then the groups presented Pro and Con sides to each argument to the whole class.

If you already have groups set up in a class, then you select one member of each team to go learn about an area. Otherwise you can just number them off however many sections you want them to learn and send them to learn the info and go back and report on it.

This is also a wonderful way to get students up on their feet before their classmates to present what they have learned. It is not, (for those who are not educators) easier than doing a whole class lesson, however -- if you're doing it right, you'll be on your feet the whole time moving from group to group to monitor their progress and answer questions.

It will, however, probably be more memorable and rewarding for your students.

I have had groups of students analyze a scene or chapter in a work we are studying, and had one group discuss how the setting affects the action, another analyze characters and their motivations, etc. etc. to reveal the structure that the author has used to create the work.