(upbeat music)
- In this video,
I will briefly describe the jigsaw method
and an example activity that falls under that method.
Jigsaw activities are some of
my favorite classroom activities
because they're highly dynamic,
they're highly versatile, they cover multiple skills,
they can turn a reading or listening lesson
into a lesson that practices
reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
They require careful planning, but in the end it's worth it.
There are countless different forms that a jigsaw activity
can take, but they all follow one general pattern of steps.
The first step is to divide a text
into three to five different sections.
This can be done with different listenings,
but it's usually done with a reading.
You're gonna give each learner in your class,
a different section of the text
and their job is to become an expert on that section.
This can be done individually,
or it can be done in groups or both.
I prefer to start individually
and then put them into groups to become experts together,
as in the example, I'm going to show you.
The most important step is that you
create complete jigsaw puzzle groups,
this is what makes an activity, a jigsaw activity.
You create groups that contain
at least one member for each section of the text,
and each expert shares their expertise in those groups
and there is different activities
that they can do in those groups.
And finally, there should be some sort of project
to show that there is
general comprehension of the entire text.
That project can be done as a group or as an individual
and I'll talk about some examples
when I show you my example, jigsaw activity.
For my example, jigsaw activity, I have here, a text,
this text should look familiar to those of you
in the course, it is called the VARK learning modalities.
It has an introductory paragraph,
and then it describes each of
the four main learning modalities,
visual, aural auditory, read/write and kinesthetic.
Readings like this are very common
in ESL materials where you have
an introductory paragraph and then sort of a list
and they're great for jigsaw activities
because they're easily separable into different groups.
To that end, I have cut them up into slips.
So I have several copies of each one
of the different styles,
cut into slips that I can hand to the learners
Here you see an example set up of a classroom.
The teacher is at the bottom center
and we have what we call a horseshoe seating arrangement
and I love this seating arrangement
to make the classroom communicative
and everyone can see each other
and easily converse with each other.
At this point,
the teacher standing in front of the room will read the VARK
learning modalities, introductory paragraph,
show the class the entire text,
and then hand out reading slips to the learner,
starting from left to right.
So I'll give the first learner, the visual,
the next learner will get the aural and then the read/write
and the kinesthetic and roll repeat,
visual, aural, read/write, kinesthetic.
They're receiving their individual section of the text.
At this point,
I will tell them they have perhaps five minutes
to read their texts.
I want them to mark any words that they don't know,
maybe underline any sentences
that they're having trouble comprehending,
but they're reading alone for about five minutes at the end
of that five minute period, I will tell them to stop,
I will say, if you have the visual information,
I want you to go to that corner
and the learners will move there.
I'll say I want my auditory aural experts
to move to this corner here
and then I'll have my read/write experts
come to this side and the kinesthetic experts here.
And now you can see,
we have four groups that represent the experts
for each section of the text
and at this point they're going
to work together for comprehension.
They can ask each other questions
about things they didn't understand.
They can work together to try to comprehend the difficult
vocabulary and the teacher will walk around
and help them with that.
It's important you can tell them
that they need to be prepared to lecture about the content
of their part of the text without the text.
As I tell them that they will not be able to use the text,
I don't want them to lean on it,
and I certainly don't want them reading it word for word.
So they in their groups,
they need to be preparing each other
for individual lecturing.
At this point, we're ready to jigsaw.
So I will look at each group and I will number them first
with the read/write group,
I want you to number one, two and three.
So one, two, three, good kinesthetic
we number one, two, three,
the visual group ,I want one, two, three,
and I don't need four,
I'm gonna ask for another one.
Then the aural group one, two, three,
and I don't want too many ones,
so I'm gonna ask for another two.
At this point we're ready to regroup.
Can I have my number ones right here?
My number twos come over here into a group
and my number threes are a group right here.
You can see now we have three little bit larger groups
and each group has at least one expert
for each section of the text
and they're going to work together, take turns
sharing their expertise,
often I'll do this very formally,
I will say because visual is the first section of the text,
I'm gonna to give the visual expert three minutes
to lecture and the other students are to listen carefully,
take notes, save their questions for the end
and we'll take turns doing that
three minutes for each expert in the group
to present their information.
As I mentioned, each jigsaw group should have,
each jigsaw activity should have a project at the end
and some possibilities for that
answer, random order questions.
Now, normally when you create a question worksheet
for reading, you want those questions to appear
in the exact order that the information appears in the text,
but that's not the case for jigsaw.
You can give them a worksheet with random ordered questions,
or you can cut your worksheet up into slips
and that way they have to read the questions together
and try to figure out which expert has
the information to answer that question.
We can also task them
with writing a group summary,
something I've done is given each group
a large piece of butcher paper
and I have them work together
to create a summary of the entire text
that we can hang up on the wall.
That's a great thing to do
if you can hang those
summaries up on the wall
at the end of a lesson,
you can then give each
learner the entire text
to read at home for homework.
So in the next class they come in
and at one point you can say,
we've all read this text,
let's together decide which one
of these group created summaries
was the best one
other thing you can do
is you've had them take notes
from their other experts,
you can ask them to write individual summaries.
It's really important that if you're going to do this,
you tell them ahead of time that you want them to do that
so that they know they have to take very careful notes.
They're gonna have to write a summary
of the entire reading,
even though they've only read about one quarter of it,
they have to rely on the experts in their group to orally
present that information to them,
they have to listen carefully
and take good notes so that
they can create that summary based off of their knowledge
and the notes that they took from
the other members of their group.
I may also give my students some comprehension questions
or maybe a graphic organizer that they can fill out
as they listen to the other experts
explain their part of the text.
Here's an example of a graphic organizer
that would work well with this particular text.
So that is my example activity
that falls under the jigsaw method.
As I said before,
I love jigsaw activities because
of their versatility, their dynamism,
and the fact that they practice multiple skills.
They do require careful planning, but it is worth it,
and I encourage you to experiment
with the jigsaw method in your classroom.