WHAT IT IS:

The Jigsaw strategy is a student grouping strategy for engaging with content at multiple levels and leveraging student-as-teacher experiences.

HOW IT WORKS:

In its most basic form, the Jigsaw strategy begins with organizing students into small groups of equal numbers (works best, at least) such as five groups of five students. Once in these “mastery” groups, students are given content with which to engage. Each group is given either a different piece of content about the same topic or different topics within the same theme.

After the group has examined, discussed, and learned its content, students are then broken apart into groups based on the number of students in the mastery groups to form sharing groups in which there is one student from each mastery group. In our example, if there were five students in the mastery groups, then there should again be five students in the sharing groups.

In the sharing groups, each mastery group representative in turn shares explanations and understandings of that student’s mastery group content.