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Jigsaw Classroom: Tool Kit

Jessica Bucholz, Associate Professor of Education, Tusculum University

CONTENT AREA

Teaching Strategies - Student Engagement

THIS TOOLKIT WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO

Use a cooperative learning activity to engage students in the content of your course.

KEY OBJECTIVES

Participants will learn how to incorporate the Jigsaw Classroom as a cooperative learning strategy in their classroom or online face-to-face class sessions.
Participants will learn how to use this strategy to differentiate for the readiness levels of the students in their class.
Participants will develop a list of topics from their curriculum that could be taught using the Jigsaw Classroom method.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT THIS TOOLKIT

Break your class into “home” groups with equal numbers of students and assign each student in each group a number (e.g., four groups of six students. Number students in each of the four groups 1,2,3,4,5 or 6).

Identify key topics that you plan to address in your class session. There should be the same number of topics as the number of students in each group (e.g., 6 students in a group so six topics).

Identify resources prior to the lesson for students to use (e.g., textbook chapter, video clips, articles, etc.) that cover the topics that you’ve identified for the class session.

In class, assign groups of students to a topic.
- For example, a lesson about co-teaching models in a special education course:
  - Assign all students who were given the number 1 the topic of parallel teaching,
  - Assign all students who were given the number 2 the topic of station teaching.
  - Assign all students who were given the number 3 the topic of team teaching.
  - Assign all students who were given the number 4 the topic of alternate teaching.
  - Assign all students who were given the number 5 the topic of one teach one observe.
  - Assign all students who were given the number 6 the topic of one teach one assist.

These students now review the materials on their topic area to become “experts” on the subject. You can provide different types and different levels of materials to meet the different needs of students that you may have in your class. For example, if I know I have a student who is not great with silent reading comprehension but has strong listening comprehension skills, I would make sure to provide that student with materials that are narrated, for example a video or article that can be accessed with text to speech.

Once students have had time to review the provided materials, have the experts get together in groups (e.g., all 1s together, all 2s, etc.) to review and clarify understanding of the materials/topic and to create presentations that will then be shared back in the “home” groups in order to teach the content to the members of that “home” group.

Next, reassemble the original groups of students into their “home” groups. Each topic expert in the group then takes a turn teaching the other members of the group about his/her assigned topic. For example, the person who was assigned number 4 and is an expert on the topic of alternate teaching would teach the group about that model of co-teaching. Make sure to float through the group (or visit individual breakout rooms if doing this virtually).

Once all students have taken a turn teaching their group, bring the whole group together to review and close the lesson.

End by creating a method to assess student learning of the topic. This could be a ticket out the door, a written assignment, a short quiz, or an activity that students complete for homework.

DESCRIPTION

The jigsaw classroom is a research-based cooperative learning technique invented and developed by Elliot Aronson in 1971. The Jigsaw Classroom shifts the role of the teacher to that of facilitator and support person, rather than sage on the stage who shares in the learning process with the students. Students are required to be active participants and to be responsible not only for their own learning but also for the learning of the members in their group. Cooperative learning fosters positive interdependence, simultaneous interactions and individual accountability for learning. This type of activity requires students to work together while depending on each other to develop understanding of the topics being taught. Since no one knows who will be called on to answer a question, all students in the group must work together to ensure that all members of the group understand the content. The Jigsaw classroom provides instructors with an efficient method for helping students to learn the course content. Each student in the group has an essential part to play in the learning process/academic activity. The team needs to work together to accomplish their learning objectives, and no student can succeed completely unless the group works as a team to support, educate, and encourage the learning of all in the group.

REFLECTION

I use lectures to introduce topics and share important information, but I feel that classes that consist of only lectures can be difficult for students with varying learning styles and/or disabilities. Since I teach the area of special education, I feel that it is important that I model for my students’ techniques that should be engaging for university students but that they can also use with their students in K-12. Cooperative learning is one strategy that I think is very important for education majors to be aware of as a technique that can help all students in a class learn content while also learning how to work with others. I have used this technique in both face-to-face classes as well as classes that have been conducted virtually on zoom using the breakout rooms.

RESOURCES

Perkins, D. V., & Saris, R. N. (2001). A "jigsaw classroom" technique for undergraduate statistics courses. Teaching of Psychology, 28(2), 111-113. doi:https://doi.org/10.1207/S15328023TOP2802_09
Mohebbi, Z., Mortezaei-Haftador, A., & Mehrabi, M. (2022). Synchronous online lecturing or blended flipped classroom with jigsaw: An educational intervention during the covid-19 pandemic. BMC Medical Education, 22, 1-9. doi:https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03915-5