A jigsaw activity is a useful strategy for sharing a lot of information, often in the form of written articles or other text, without everyone having to read all of it. It works well in large groups and small groups but works best when you have a large enough group of people reading the same article to have a good diversity of views.
For purposes of this discussion about standards, you will need to make enough copies of the following online articles so that everyone has something to read. The outcome for this jigsaw activity would be that staff have a better understanding of the national context for standards and where Maryland fits in that context. The articles will also serve as a catalyst for the discussion about how standards affect accountability for their school and impact instruction in their classrooms.
The following two articles are a good starting point for this activity. You may want to add additional articles depending on the size of your group.
If A Decade of Standards
an interview with Lynn Olson and Chris Swanson about findings after the release of Quality Counts 2006
Directions
- Hand out one article or excerpt from an article to all staff participating in the activity. Distribute the same article to staff at the same table to ease the transition to the discussion part.
- Allow 15 minutes for staff to read their article.
- Have the staff who read the same article discuss and agree on the main points of the article and any new learnings.
- Regroup the participants so that each new group contains one or two people who read each of the articles and have everyone share the main ideas of their article.
- At the end of the sharing, each group should answer the following questions on chart paper or transparencies.
- Identify 3 things that you learned today about standards.
- How do state standards affect you and your classroom?
- How do state standards affect students?
- Have each group report out their answers.
- Reports could also be included in paper or electronic format for the whole staff to read.
If you did not have time to do the whole jigsaw activity, you could shorten it by having each original group who read the same article report out to the whole group the main points of their article.
