3。 Processes of Jigsaw Teaching Method

Jigsaw teaching method can be operated in different ways。 The first way is that when it comes to the articles which are suitable for segregating, it is very convenient to pide the reading material into several parts, especially those with clear structures。 For instance, if the article is a biographical story, we can pide it according to the time; if it is an exposition which introduces a certain item, distinguishing the different aspects of the item is more suitable; if the reading material is a travel note, the teacher had better segregate it according to the location。 All in all, the teacher needs to pide the same text into several parts (preferably four to five parts) and the students in each group needs to be responsible for only one part。 However, for those texts which are not suitable for piding, the second method can be maken use of by the teacher。 We must change the way of our thinking and let the students be responsible for one of the aspects of the reading material rather than one part of the text, such as vocabulary, structure, theme, grammar and so on。 If some articles are so short and easy that a lot of students are lack of interest, the teacher also has the third method。 At this moment, the teacher can choose some texts with the same theme as well as the same difficulty。 Each group tries their best to understand a piece of whole text。 Generally speaking, Jigsaw teaching method can be applied into a variety of ways and it requires students to be both independent and interdependent。

In this paper, the author makes use of a piece of reading material in the textbook of Grade 8 to illustrate the concrete processes of Jigsaw teaching method。 The article is chosen from the reading of Unit 5, which is concerned about wild animals。 The teaching period of this reading material is only about 60 minutes in that the article is not difficult for students to understand。 Based on this authentic example, the readers will have a thorough understanding of how to use Jigsaw teaching method in the teaching of reading。 And the following are the steps of the application of Jigsaw teaching method。

3。1 Dividing students into jigsaw groups and assigning tasks文献综述

Firstly, the teacher should pide students into several groups which we usually call “jigsaw groups”。 We must keep in mind that each group should not have too much students。 It is preferable that there are four or five students in a group。 When we pide the groups, some factors such as personality, interests, sex, learning skills must be taken into account。 On the other hand, the teacher had better pide the students who have the similar level in the same group。 As we all know, some students have the tendency to take the leading part in a group while other students actually do not have the ability or courage to express their own ideas。 In order to make students in the same group communicate and discuss with each other actively, we should ensure that they ought to have the similar level。 Then, the teacher should cut the reading material into several roughly equal parts。 Students in each group are responsible for different parts of the material and one or two assigned tasks are required to finish。 The teacher should make it clear that all of students must know what responsibility they should take in the activity and what task they ought to do。 

The article we choose is a story of a panda, which is called Xi Wang。 In general, there are about 30 students in a class。 Therefore, the class is pided into 6 groups and each group has 5 students。 And the 5 students have the similar interests and learning abilities。 The text which is written based on time, tells the growth of the panda。 Since it has only six paragraphs, we choose to segregate it into six parts, so each group is responsible for only one part。 And the task the teacher gives to the students is that they should use one or two sentences to describe the changes of Xi Wang’s growth。 This step will take up 10 minutes or so。