The Jigsaw Technique

Definition of the Jigsaw Technique
The Jigsaw technique is a cooperative learning technique in which students work in small groups. The jigsaw technique was first developed in the early 1970s be Elliot Aronson and his students at the University of Texas and the University of California. The jigsaw is involving a task which provides shared goal. A key requirement is that the goal cannot be reached individually. It means that the students have to work together to achieve it. Jigsaw is an efficient teaching technique that also encourages listening, engagement, interaction, peer teaching, and cooperation by giving each member of the group an essential part to play in the academic activity. Both individual and group accountability are built into the process. Each group member is assigned a different piece of information, and research or share ideas about the information. Eventually, students return to their original group to try to piece together a clear picture of the topic at hand.


Since this method of group work involves peer teaching, even the lowest performing student can actively participate, while the stronger students reinforce their knowledge by teaching it to others. Each student, no matter what his or her level of English is, has a vital piece of information, needed by the other members of the group. This factor contributes to the student's self-confidence and self-esteem.



The Jigsaw Activities
a. Jigsaw Reading
The teacher divides a reading comprehension into four or five parts. Then the teacher divides the students into some groups, which the members of each group are four or five students depend on the amount of the reading text. The group should be diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender, ability, and race. One student should be appointed as the group leader. This person should initially be the most mature student in the group. The teacher must make sure that each part of the text can be read and understood independently from the rest of the text. The class is divided into groups of four, which are called the expert groups. Each group will be assigned a specific fairy tale to read such as “Snow White”. Each group is then given one part of the text to learn independently. Students should be given time to read over their part at least twice to become familiar with it. Students do not need to memorize it. The task of these groups is to ensure that each member of the group understands his/her part of the material and that she/he will be able to teach it to others in his/her home group.
The next step involves redividing students into their home groups. In each of these groups, there will be one student representing each of the expert groups. Each member of the group now teaches the rest of the group about the section she/he just read about. The teacher needs to float from group to group in order to observe the process. Intervene if any group is having trouble such as a member being dominating or disruptive. There will come a point that the group leader should handle this task. Teachers can whisper to the group leader as to how to intervene until the group leader can effectively do it themselves. Only after all the members have reported to the home group do the students know what the passage is about. The students can then either answer the questions in the book or work on a worksheet prepared by the teacher.

b. Jigsaw Listening
The teacher prepares the audio cassette, then explains to the students about the jigsaw listening activity that they will do. The teacher breaks the class randomly into groups of four or five students each, depending of the size of the class. Each group listens to a different part of the story on the audio cassette. In the next stage the students send one or two members from their expert group to their home groups. They will be asked several questions and will have to respond and give the information. The various groups thus collect the missing sequences of the story. In their home group they speculate on the last part or the ending of the story and see if they can reconstruct the full story.


The Strength and the Weakness of the Jigsaw Technique
In using this technique, we can find some strength and also weakness. The strength of the jigsaw reading are each person in the group has responsibility, the shyer and weaker students have as much responsibility as stronger students which means no students get "pushed to the back"; in addition, it builds interpersonal and interactive skill. Large or long texts, which might be off-putting at first glance, can be broken down into more easily manageable chunks. Each student has a chance to contribute meaningfully to a discussion, something that is difficult to achieve in large-group discussion. Each student develops an expertise and has something important to contribute. Students have the opportunity to teach themselves, instead of having material presented to them. The technique fosters depth of understanding. Moreover the students are active participants in the learning process, and the teacher is not the sole provider of knowledge. In jigsaw listening, the students have to listen actively in order to learn the required material and be able to teach it to the others in their home groups. Each student has practice in self-teaching, which is the most valuable of all the skills we can help them learn.
If in a group has a member or some members that are poor readers or slow thinkers and have trouble creating a good report for their friends, will make a difficulty for their group in understanding the whole text. Occasionally, a dominant student will talk too much or try to control the group. Boredom can be a problem in any classroom, regardless of learning technique being used. If the material is chosen well, the interest and the motivation of the students will be high. The weaknesses of the jigsaw listening is the teacher have to make multiple recordings so that the groups can listen to the recording simultaneously. The teacher have to organize the space of each group, consequently they will not disturb each other. If the teacher has only one recorder then only one group can listen to the recording at a time, in which case, the teacher has to think how to occupy the other groups who are waiting to their turn to listen or for others to finish. Besides that, if the teacher only has one recorder, the other groups who are waiting to their turn to listen or for others to finish can make a noise and also disturb the group who is listening to the recorder. It will spend a lot of time if there is only one recorder.