Last week's newsletter on the dictogloss proved very popular, so I thought I would focus on another activity you can recycle and plan a whole lesson around: the jigsaw.
What is a jigsaw activity?
The jigsaw technique can be used with reading or writing. Essentially, here is how it works:
you put learners in groups and give each group a piece of reading or listening to complete. The groups will spend some time trying to understand the text and helping each other. By the end of this stage, each group will be the "expert" on a given topic
each group member will now go to a new group: the new groups will be formed by one member from each of the original groups, so that there is an "expert" on each topic. The experts in the new groups now share their information to complete a task.
What is an example of a jigsaw activity?
As an example, say you have a class of 25 students and you make 5 groups. Each group reads or listens to a short text describing a room in a house. Then, in their new groups, the students pool the information they have to draw the blueprint of the entire house.
Why is the jigsaw good?
Many reasons: it encourages cooperation, it gives learners a genuine reason to communicate, it provides practice of two skills at the very least, it allows learners both individual thinking time and sharing time, the teacher can monitor, help and provide support when needed... the list goes on!
Where can I find out more?
This article by the Bell foundation is a good starting point. We also talked about the jigsaw during our webinar on Friday: if you want to get access to the recording, slides and resources shared during the webinar, you can purchase your access at this page. You can also find all the details for how to get access to the recordings of the workshops on PPP/TTT, ESA/TBL and assessment at this page.
What do you think about the jigsaw? Let me know and... have a lovely Sunday!
We send informative emails with teaching tips and interesting materials to learn and teach English. Although we love doing this work, we understand if your inbox is too full: you can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list, no hard feelings and you can always re-subscribe in the future.
