The Understanding of Jigsaw Technique

Then the teacher organizes the class into heterogeneous “home” groups. The teacher introduces a topic, text, information, or material to the class. 48 b. Stage 2: Working through jigsaw Students first work in expert groups to learn the material they will be responsible for sharing with their home groups later in the lesson. 49 c. Stage 3: Adaptation of the original jigsaw structure Teacher modify jigsaw’s original format to suit special needs or constraints in the classroom. 50 d. Stage 4: Using jigsaw as an assessment tool. An authentic assessment of social skills and group process skills can be accomplished by observing students in a jigsaw lesson. 51 The following steps are used when implementing the jigsaw strategy: a. Divide the material needed to cover a topic into five roughly equal parts. b. Develop and assign homework questions or study guide over the material if necessary. c. Divide the students into groups of five students. d. Assign a different subtopic or section to each student within this base group. e. Put students in “expert” groups all students with the same part of material. f. Give the expert group time to discuss and agree on the major point of their part, and decide how they will teach their base group members. g. When expert group time is up, have the expert return to their base group and present or teach his or her part. Each student should teach his or her sub-topic in the same order. 48 Jeannie M. Dell’Olio, The Models of Teaching, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 2007, pp.255-258. 49 Ibid, pp.258-260. 50 Ibid, pp.260-261. 51 Ibid, p. 261. h. Group leaders in the base groups can be appointed to encourage other group members to ask questions to the expert if they do not understand. The expert is the main source of information about his or her part of the group. i. Asses student learning and provide closure. It is important to debrief when the jigsaw is complete. One way of doing it is by calling randomly on students to present what their groups learned, if further explanation is needed, the teacher should help the discussion. 52

4. The Advantages and The Disadvantages of Jigsaw Technique

It is likely to any strategies, jigsaw also has advantages and disadvantages. Kessler stated that “The jigsaw technique allows the teacher to use several texts or information sources at different levels of linguistic or conceptual difficulty, in one class.” 53 It means that the teacher can modify texts and the sources can be variety. Meanwhile, Kessler also explain the benefits derived also for students: The jigsaw strategy supports the communicative approach in language teaching. In the jigsaw classroom, students in small group are dependent on the others in the group for the information they need in order to learn a topic or complete task. 54 According to Nassanius, the advantages of jigsaw are: First, it is remarkably efficient way to learn the material. Jigsaw strategy helps to solve the problem of classes that are too large to offer many opportunities for students to speak. Second, the jigsaw process encourages listening, engagement, and empathy by giving each member of the group an essential part to play in the academic activity. Third, students are held accountable among peers. Learning from each other will lead them to value each other as contributors to their common task. A further affective benefit of this would be the increase of studen t’s motivation and self esteem. Fourth, jigsaw processes build interpersonal and interactive skills. Fifth, jigsaw promotes learner responsibility and autonomy. Group 52 Yassir Nassanius, KOLITA 7: Konferensi Lingustik Tahunan Atma Jaya 7 Tingkat internasional, Jakarta: Pusat kajian Bahasa dan Budaya Unika Atma jaya, 2009, pp. 224-225. 53 Carolyn Kessler editor, Cooperative Language Learning, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, inc., 1992, p. 137 54 ibid.