Jigsaw--A Cooperative Learning Tool Which Builds Students' Self-Confidence in Tackling Demanding Reading Materials

With Common Core, activities like jigsaw will provide academically weak students with multiple productive opportunities to interact with informational/non-fiction text.  If teachers want students to become independent learners, they must provide students with ample activities to support them in navigating complex texts.

 Jigsaw has as many variations as there are teachers who use it.  One common variation involves home groups and expert groups.  Home groups are created by just having students count off from 1-6.  Then all like numbers (ex. all the 1s, 2s, etc.) form home groups.  The teacher then numbers off students in the groups (1-6).  At that point, all like numbers move to form new groups (they will return to home groups after they do the jigsaw).   The teacher then assigns key chunks of the reading material to each expert group.   By having students work in small groups, anxiety for a struggling student drops.  S/he collaborates with fellow students within a safe peer group where questions can be asked and answered with no sense of embarrassment.  In this setting, poor readers are in groups of varying literacy.  Team spirit must be in play here as the group analyzes the text.  This leads to every student becoming an expert in the content.  Students then return to their home groups and each member teaches the others the content that they studied in their expert groups.

Here is a  classroom doing jigsaw.  Please note that though the video shows an elementary class doing jigsaw, it can be done at any grade level right up to professional development sessions for teachers:)

Denise

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Word Sorts Activity in a Lesson on Slavery in America

The institution of slavery is a difficult subject to teach in many schools.  It reminds Americans that in the not too distant past, human beings were being bought and sold like animals.  However, if American history is to be taught in its entirety (good with the bad), slavery must be addressed.  So the question is how this can be done in such a fashion as to not make any student feel uncomfortable while still covering the subject material.  This topic becomes even more of a challenge to teach when there are African Americans in the class. 

SLAVERY IN AMERICA  To cover such sensitive material in the depth this teacher does is impressive.  The word sort is a form of front loading vocabulary to not only prepare them for the lesson, but to see how much they might already know.  A free sort allows students to group the words any way that fits for them.  Since there is not right or wrong answer, and since they are working with partners, anxiety levels are low especially for ELLs.  Students are free to justify their word sorts in any fashion that works for them.  The teacher selects some key words which they will need in reading about Harriet Tubman. 

Word sorts may be used in any subject area and at any grade level.  For English language learners, this activity taps into prior experiences/knowledge through cognates, support from peers, guidance from teachers, etc.  Using this approach builds an academic foundation which in turn leads to students being in a position to approach the lesson, task, reading with far more confidence since the key words will no longer be new.

Denise

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