In a nutshell based on student’s preference, positive acceptance of the method and students performance, authors recommend that this interactive and proactive technique can be adopted in teaching.
Strategies that you can use anytime, regardless of learning intention or what phase of learning your students are in.
Content focused. This is where students learn ideas/vocabulary/procedural skills and explore concepts.
Relationship in and among content. Students consolidate their understanding, applying and extending surface learning after building requisite knowledge.
Transfer of newly learned skills to novel situations or tasks.
The method also has other benefits, including:
Direct engagement by the students with the material to be learned instead of having material presented to them, which fosters depth of understanding
Practice in self-teaching, which is one of the most valuable skills we can help them learn
Practice in peer teaching, which requires them to understand the material at a deeper level than students typically do when simply asked to produce on an exam
Improvement in social-emotional learning, including increased feelings of autonomy, competence, and intrinsic motivation (Hänze & Berger, 2007)
Speaking the language of the discipline and thus becoming more fluent in the use of discipline-based terminology
Contributing to the group
Encouraging cooperation and active learning and promoting the valuing of all students’ contributions (source)
This was my first introduction to the term “jigsaw.” This ineffective application of the label serves as a way to divide a long article into pieces. Each group member takes a piece, then summarizes it for the small group (or large group).
"Harm may be done as less effective readers share misinformation with the group and everyone’s understanding is compromised" (Source).
Only this summer did I attempt the home and expert groups approach to jigsaw. The process involved grouping students into “home” groups. Then, students chose one resource of the available list. Once students decided on their resource, they formed up into “expert” groups. The expert groups worked to plumb the depths of the same article. Then they discussed their takeaways with each other in their respective home groups. Here’s a link to the organizer my students used in Google Docs format.
"In this type of activity, learners still don’t have the opportunity to discuss how their assigned part fits within the whole text; groups just report on the particular section they read. And the critical thinking that’s accomplished through analysis and synthesis doesn’t happen" (Source)..
The critical third step of the three-step jigsaw involves students returning to their expert groups. Once back in expert groups, they discuss how their part fits into the whole.
In the third phase of the jigsaw, students return to their expert groups and discuss how their passage fits into the whole text, based on their discussions with their home group. The point of this third phase is to have students engage in a part-to-whole conversation in which they arrive at a deeper understanding about the text and its implications.
Students think about their thinking (metacognition) and synthesize and analyze ideas contained within the complete text. This process requires that students listen carefully to their peers and analyze the ways in which each part contributes to the entire text. (Source).
Divide into groups. This is your Home Group.
Number of so that each person in the group has a number.
Each member of the Home Group will be responsible for learning and teaching one "chunk" of content to your peers, assigned by the number you have.
Take a look at your content chunk.
Go join your Expert Group, the people who have the same number as you, to begin the activity.
Working alone in your Expert Group
Study your assigned resource for 8 minutes.
Jot down the big takeaways, the key points, and/or the must-knows. This jigsaw notes organizer will come in handy.
Return to your Home Group. You now have just two minutes each to teach the others in your group what each Expert learned. Use the resources/notes you created as you share.
The Jigsaw Method doesn't work unless we assess the learning. So now, individually, please draw your responses to the following questions:
What does Hattie’s research mean to you as an educator?
What are the takeaways?
What is one strategy shared in resources that works?
These content chunks focus on two strategies that help with feedback. The first is feedback itself. The second is retrieval practice. You will learn about these two powerful strategies while exploring digital tools.
Many of the examples you will find online for the jigsaw method focus on science, history, and/or nonfiction texts. But what about mathematics? Is the jigsaw method only for literacy? No, it can be used for math with success. Read this blog entry to find out how.
Source: Fisher, Frey, and Hattie (2021). The Distance Learning Playbook