Author's Purpose Jigsaw
Cooperation, Responsibilty, and Success!
Background
Jigsaw is a core instructional strategy that was first introduced in the 1970s. Using jigsaw in the classroom is a great way to apply cooperative learning. Teaching students in the special education setting, it is hard for my students to feel like they are apart of a group. They often feel like they aren’t smart enough or can’t keep up with the rest of the class. Using a jigsaw allows each student to work at their pace and contribute to the content and the class. According to research one reason this is a successful strategy is because “No student can succeed completely unless everyone works well together as a team. This "cooperation by design" facilitates interaction among all students in the class, leading them to value each other as contributors to their common task” (Aronson ,2000). Using this strategy to teach Author’s Purpose will enhance listening, cooperative work, and a sense of being apart of a group.
To teach students about Author’s Purpose using a jigsaw is a perfect way to get them engaged with the content while also allowing group collaboration, and show responsibility. Teaching students about author’s purpose will help them evaluate their own writing and the material they read each day. It helps them to connect with text and look further into what they reading.
Example
In this example students will be placed into 3 groups, depending on your class size you chose how many students in each group. Each group will be responsible for researching one of three authors purpose, to persuade, entertain, or inform to become experts in.
Each group will be provided with a contract that states their responsibility to the group. Each student in the group will be responsible for research, the creation of a PowerPoint presentation to the class and presenting the presentation to the class. Next, each group will access the prezi presentation below and follow their path based on their author’s purpose. Using the presentation students will explore their author’s purpose to find the following information to include in their presentations:
- What is Author’s Purpose and which are you research?
- How does it help readers to understand stories or writing?
- What does the Author want you to learn about?
- What are some examples of text with your purpose?
- Create a short paragraph using your author’s purpose.
Student need to include a title slide and a work cited page.
Once students have finished researching and creating their Power Points they will present their Power Point to the class. During the presentations the student will take notes on the sheet from Google doc.
After all the presentations the students will take an online quiz to assess their knowledge of the content and to respond to questions about what the activity.
Take the Challenge!
- To make this task more vigorous, educators can expand on text that includes all three purposes for writing. Have student’s explore the text and create a graphic organizer that students fill in with specific examples from the story for each purpose.
- Have students do an Author's Purpose Hunt either around the room or even in the library. Their purpose is find examples of each Author's Purpose.
Citations/Credits
Aronson, Elliot (2000) “Jigsaw Classroom" http://www.jigsaw.org/index.html
All other images created by Amy Gerhart