Jigsaw
Overview
As students work with and process information by discussing, organizing, and sharing it together, they deepen their understanding. When learners become experts on a certain topic through analyzing multimodal texts, whether in groups or individually, and share their understanding with different students, they practice their literacy skills during content area instruction. Research has shown that student understanding of content material is higher after participating in jigsaw reading activities.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch as this teacher uses jigsaw as a differentiation strategy for reading comprehension. Each student in the home group has time to prepare an idea to share and, working together, all become experts and can share their learning with other students.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Starting at 1:16, learn how Popplet allows students to collaboratively create shareable presentations. These presentations can be created in the first jigsaw group and support students when sharing their expertise in the second group.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Cooperative Learning Strategies
Students practice making and finding meaning in texts through book discussions moderated by teachers to varying degrees.
When peers are able to work together to plan, draft, edit, and revise during the Composition process, their writing quality improves.
Flexible grouping is a classroom practice that temporarily places students together in given groups to work together, with the purpose of achieving a given learning goal or activity.
As students move through multimodal stations pertaining to a particular unit, the social and physical nature of the activity supports deeper understanding.
When students provide constructive feedback on each other's work, they learn to give relevant suggestions, receive specific ways to improve their writing, and engage in Metacognition.
Having students teach their knowledge, skills, and understanding to their classmates strengthens learning and increases Motivation.
When students explain to others, they deepen their understanding and gain confidence in their learning.
Bringing students' every day literacy practice of texting into the classroom provides regular, low-stakes practice communicating with authentic audiences.
Think-pair-share encourages meaningful student discussion by allowing for extra processing time and multiple shares.
Writing conferences allow students to fully immerse, share, reflect, and receive feedback during the writing process, promoting Motivation for continuing the sometimes lengthy revision process that occurs in the upper grades.
