6 Jigsaw Puzzles and Expert Readers
We often use these two exercises in conjunction with one another. Again, with so many of our own activities and teaching strategies in our classes with pre-service teachers, these can be easily adapted by teachers to use in their own classrooms. Jigsaw Puzzles: we assign one article to be read in pieces by several students – we just number the class off into 123s, then assign all the 1s pages 1-8 of an article, the 2s pages 9-15, and the 3s pages 16-24. This sectioning off allows us to use longer articles without overwhelming students with reading tasks, and allows students to really focus on their few pages. In class, we ask all the people who were number 1s to come together into a small group (or a few small groups – three to four people is best), and do this for all the sections/numbers – these are the Expert Readers groups. Then we ask each small group – remember, they all had the same section in common – to take about fifteen minutes to discuss their section, ask each other any questions they had from reading their section, and finally to write down several key points that summarize the section they read.
Next, students leave their Expert Reader groups, and form a new set of small groups, each of which has all of the sections represented – Jigsaw Groups. Talking in the order of the article, those with section 1 explain their section to the other people in their group, who did not read that section; then the 2s share, and then the 3s. In this way, after twenty to thirty minutes of small group discussions, each small group has had the opportunity to hear about the article in its entirety.
In addition to allowing class members to focus their reading time on one smaller section, in order to be ready to share with their groups, this reading/sharing strategy can be used by teachers in a number of classroom settings to support students. Those who read much more slowly than their classmates may have their anxiety lessened to have a smaller number of pages assigned to read; those who are not comfortable speaking out in front of the whole class, or responding to open-ended questions, may find it easier to speak in smaller groups, and with a specific focus of sharing what they read.
