Learn by doing!

JIGSAW!!!!

Today we had some fun in class.. we learned about jigsaw! a great strategy for teachers to use in their classrooms. It was great because we learned about the essential elements while we preformed the strategy.

Jigsaw is a strategy that takes a group of students of different abilities, genders, race, ect. and places them into a group to work together. Each member of the group is then assigned a task to master. This can be a variety of things, for example if you are learning about a unit of history, the teacher can break it up into specific time frames and each member of the group gets a time frame. Then the students are asked to leave their group and become MASTERS! They do this by finding the person from the other groups that have the same task as them. Together these students become masters of a particular topic, the become masters so that they can come back to their group and teach it to their peers. The teacher can provide these groups with:

Internet web sites

Journals

Notes

textbooks

Pictures

books

ect.

The tools that students can use to learn about their topic is endless, the teacher can use this time to be creative and make it a fun experience. Once the students become masters of their topic they are to go back into their main groups and teach their peers about the topic.

I think all of the concepts we learning were crucial for carrying out jigsaw, each of my peers became masters of their topic and gave a great explanation. Students must be accountable for the information, they are responsible for learning what their peer is telling them, and they are also accountable for explaining the information properly. When it comes to social skills, students need to have these to go through the jigsaw strategy. If there is a deficit within one of the areas they may not be successful. Skills are communication, listening, respect, leadership, and so on. These skills go along with face-to face interactions. The students should be set up in an environments where they are knee to knee and eye to eye, it will benefit their learning.

Benefits are: First and foremost, it is a remarkably efficient way to learn the material. But even more important, the jigsaw process encourages listening, engagement, and empathy by giving each member of the group an essential part to play in the academic activity. Group members must work together as a team to accomplish a common goal; each person depends on all the others. No student can succeed completely unless everyone works well together as a team. This "cooperation by design" facilitates interaction among all students in the class, leading them to value each other as contributors to their common task.