Jigsaw Collaborative Tasks for the Win
Built-in differentiation for all WIDA levels
I've been in Nepal for the past ten days facilitating workshops on Action Research for Social Transformation. The participants all speak English (as a 2nd or 3rd language)-most have their PhDs. Still, I used the jigsaw method a lot, and it was super engaging and helped the participants understand the dense and complex material.
When you organize the jigsaw method, a group of students become "experts" on a specific portion of the text or body of knowledge and then share that material with another group. This task is a way to scaffold students understanding of information while they develop their collaboration skills. Because students know they will be responsible for teaching the new content to their peers, they often feel more accountable for learning the material. It's especially effective when students know that they will be using the information they have learned from each other to create a final product, participate in a class discussion, or acquire material that will be on a test.
It's a great strategy when working with Multilingual Learners because you can assign text to different reading levels or students with different levels of expertise.
Here are the directions:
Explain to your class how the jigsaw activity works.
Share the essential questions and/or the I can… statements based on your class goals or standards.
Photo by Austin Kehmeier on Unsplash Assign each student to a "home group" of 3-4 students with different WIDA levels or language abilities.
Determine a set of reading selections (of different lengths or reading levels). Assign one selection to each student, carefully assigning students the text within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).
Let students read their text on their own. Prepare guiding questions to help each student gather information in their particular area.
Next, form groups where everyone in the group has read the same text. They become the "experts" of this information. Prepare a simple graphic organizer that the group completes for their portion of the text. Tell them to make sure they understand the information from their peers because they'll be the only ones with this information when they are in the next group.
While the “expert” groups are discussing their reading, quickly rearrange the groups pulling a student from each one to form a new group.
Prepare a summary chart or graphic organizer for each "home group" as a guide for organizing the experts' information report. That way, when each student is talking, the other students in their group have a task to do to keep them engaged and listening.
For example, each group reads about a different issue and uses this graphic organizer. Remember to choose a graphic organizer that fits the style of the text they are reading.
https://www.canva.com/graphic-organizers/templates/
a variety of free templates here that you can rework to fit the text structure
At the end, all the students must submit this graphic organizer with the information from all the other students in their group.
Differentiation is built-in when you organize the text with various lengths and complexity. This type of collaboration works for all content areas, and it helps not to overwhelm students with text, AND they all still understand the content. Always allow students to use their primary languages within the group to help facilitate access to the content.
How have you used the jigsaw in your classes?
What worked? What was challenging?