I spent five days on my jigsaw lesson doing the following activities on each day:
- Explain concept and work in expert groups
- Work in expert groups
- Work in jigsaw groups
- Work in jigsaw groups and class discussion
- Assessment (test)
In most of my classes, the expert groups and jigsaw groups worked well together. However, there were a few expert groups where only a one or two members knew the material well enough to teach it to their jigsaw groups. Also, some students did not take the assessment seriously and did not study for it as they should have. Others did very well.
I think next time I will build in some incentives for each expert group to know their material backwards and forward in order to explain it to the jigsaw groups. I also think I will ask them to write assessment questions that go along with their concepts.
I will definitely be using this lesson again, but I will be adding some tweaks to it. Also, I think spending an extra day in the schedule may allow expert groups to really know their material.
