Jigsaw- Comprehension Strategy

Jigsaw...as in a comprehension strategy not the puzzle!  

My second and third grade students were working on a planets book that was divided up by the different planets.  Before that we had read about the sun, moon, and stars.  

I decided to place the students into groups and jigsaw the book.  Jigsaw is a cooperative learning strategy that helps students work together to comprehend a text in manageable chunks.  Groups read their sections and then teach the other groups the information from their parts.  That way everyone learns the information from each section.  

Students were placed in small groups to read and decide which information in their section was important to learn and remember.  They then made charts to visually display what they had learned.  

I like how the groups have to work together to accomplish the task.  There is a lot of discussion about what they should include on the charts.  I had each group decide how they wanted to display their information.  I like to give students choices in their learning.

As you can see in the first chart above, these students decided to go with bullet points and drawings of their planet.

This group also went with bullet points, but decided they would add symbols to represent the important information.  I love that they applied learning from social studies in the classroom and applied it to learning they were doing in another room!!  That is how you know they really got it when they start applying the information in other areas and for other people.  :)

Can you tell this group was a group of girls??  We had previously learned about using circle maps to organize our information.  These girls decided to use the circle map to display what they learned.  Then they went back and drew a bunch of Venus planets and some squigglies to pretty it up!  So interesting how different groups decided to make their charts.