JIGSAW

Definition/Description: Jigsaw is a cooperative learning strategy that enables each student to become an expert on a certain topic, through
communication and discussion with others reading the same text, researching the same topic or unit, and then share their findings to their original “home” group.
One student from each group has his/her own topic and then they meet with other students from other groups who have the same topic and they work together to
decide the most important parts to share back with their original or home group to help them develop the same understanding.
V I DE O Justification: The jigsaw strategy is a student-centered
The video link above demonstrates how to use jigsaw in a middle
strategy that increases students’ participation, which creates a
school language arts class and how it helps students understand
supportive and motivating environment for ELLs. This strategy
complex text. It states how giving students a responsibility and
incorporates reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, but
allowing then to be the experts in a group helps build their
it also develops students’ interpersonal skills and encourages
comprehension skills, confidence, and social skills. You can notice
them to communicate and collaborate with their peers.
in the video there are students form different ethnicity, and possibly
Reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills are necessary in
some students who are ELL and see how they are working together
developing for student literacy development. “To build a
to gain understanding.
foundation for college and career readiness in language,
student must gain control over many conventions of standard
English grammar, usage, and mechanic as well as learn other
ways to use language to convey meaning” (Wright, 2015, pg
30). This means students must have the language necessary,
and through this strategy students are communicating and
using language to convey the meaning of a certain
topic. Aronson along with others from University of Texas and
the University of California had the original research that gave
credibility to the jigsaw approach for reading comprehension.
He states that having student’s complete jigsaws allows them

The picture above and below are two ways that demonstrate how
this strategy works. There is one expert in a group and they share
their findings with their new group, which for ELLs makes them
accountable for their learning as well as gives them the
collaboration and communication aspect to deepen there
understanding and gain confidence in sharing to their group! These
are two good diagrams that teachers could use for visual aids in the
classroom to help student understand how to do the
strategy. (Jigsaw, 2013).
to build confidences and emphasizes cooperative learning in
the classroom. By providing students an opportunity to actively
help each other it build comprehension, social skills, as well as
helps them look at the same information differently (Aronson,
2015).The benefits of using Jigsaw for reading compression is
it encourages students to share ideas and increased their
learning through the communication and discussion with
others. It teaches students cooperation, responsibility,
teamwork, critical thinking and social skills, which are all skills
that students need to be successful in the twenty-first century
(Clarke, 2013).

In this video, to the right, it goes through how to do/use the jigsaw
strategy. It goes through home groups and expert groups as well as
how to pick out articles related to the topic. Then the strategy is
demonstrated in a classroom. This video will help teachers realize
how to effectively engage students while using the jigsaw strategy.
This would be a good video to show students before actually doing
an activity, because then they can see how it words, and this will
eliminate some questions.