Teaching Tool Box: 'Jigsaw'

The 'jigsaw' technique creates collaboration between different students in the classroom as they work to develop an argument, prepare for a debate, or analyze different pieces of reading.  It can be used for a variety of classroom tasks, but I'll just describe one scenario in a typical U.S. History classroom where the students are reading and dissecting four different Primary Documents:  An Indentured Servant Writes Home, The Mayflower Compact, Common Sense, & Declaration of Independence.

Number of Students in the Class:  12

Group A:  Students A1, A2, A3 - An Indentured Servant Writes Home
Group B:  Students B1, B2, B3 - The Mayflower Compact
Group C:  Students C1, C2, C3 - Common Sense
Group D:  Students D1, D2, D3 - Declaration of Independence

Homework coming into the class:

Ask the students to read and 'mark'
(https://docs.google.com/a/blair.edu/document/d/1fB--p1GLQcnycZzYqHrrfZVj3lNQfJ1d5aWZH9okDuU/edit) their assigned document, and only their assigned document, and let them know that they will be discussing them with the other members of the group.  Prior to this assignment, we would have completed historical background and perhaps discussed the documents briefly as an entire class so that the students were not approaching them completely 'cold'.

During Class:

1.  When the students arrive at class, have them break up into their document groups so they can discuss what they took away from the readings with an eye towards a common question that has already been developed by the class, such as: How do these documents reflect the underlying causes for the American Revolution?

2.  Give the students 15-30 minutes (depends on your class dynamic) to discuss their particular documents within their group.

3.  Now, break up the groups and place one person from each group into a new group (3 total) so that the new groups have all of the documents covered:

Group E:  A1, B1, C1, D1
Group F:  A2, B2, C2, D2
Group G:  A3, B3, C3, D3

Have these groups then discuss their documents to the other members of the group.  In this way, each of the documents has been covered and their is one 'expert' on each of the documents in each of the 3 new groups.  The idea is that the 3 new groups will be able to develop a response to the essential question (How do these documents reflect the underlying causes for the American Revolution?) through collaboration by the individual members. (15-30 minutes, again depending on the class dynamic)

4.  Have one member from each group (E, F, G) then close the class by reporting out to the class what answer they arrived at for the essential question.  These can be put up on the overhead, you can collect the responses and use them to start the next class etc.

Closing Thoughts:

An exercise such as this might actually take more than one class, and the length and difficulty of the documents might need adjustment depending on the make-up of your class, but the essential goal remains the same - getting students to read closely and carefully, making them responsible for learning the material, or at least coming up with good questions about it, so they will be able discuss the document with the other members of the group, and then multiplying the document coverage by mixing the groups together.  During the whole exercise, the teacher should move around to each of the groups, asking questions, suggesting different directions of inquiry etc., but the students are driving the learning.