The Goal of the lesson plan is to use pictures and written information so that the students develop a more meaningful understanding of interdependence within ecosystems. They will do this by examining how the plants and animals in a saltwater marsh interact and interrelate with each other.
The Objectives of the lesson plan is for the students to identify important facts about the plants and animals in a saltwater marsh using tidal changes, plants, and animals as the three areas of information. Students must also master new vocabulary terms including; salt marsh, tide, cordgrass, marsh hay, burrow, and gills to write a paragraph with five integrated facts.
Following the “Jigsaw” teaching method involves ten steps, with a specific goal for each step.
- The lesson begins by dividing the students into five or six person “jigsaw” groups. These groups should be as diverse as possible.
- The information sets are environmental with three subsets of tide, plants and animals and active concerning how these features interact with each other. Using the graphics and written information, I would divide the information so individual students in each group have a primary focus based upon one, or more than one plant or animal. Their task would then be to learn about that plant or animal in terms of what it needs to survive and how the environment helps or hinders it. Dividing the lesson into these segments insures that each person has a unique focus that is important to the group’s team effort.
- Then I would assigning one segment to each student making sure that each group member holds a key set of information. In this case, it would be the in-depth information on one plant or animal. Making sure that they do not share their assignment with the others at the beginning of the process prevents their information from being discounted or ignored at the end.
- Once the segments are distributed, the students need time to read them over and become familiar with the information. This gives the students a chance to internalize the segment and start to formulate how they are going to address the information and its presentation to the group. This step is important with any new information set and is not dependent upon this particular set of information on salt marshes.
- The “expert groups” would be made up of students from each jigsaw group who are working on the same plant or animal. These students can help each other develop the information, write their five fact paragraphs and rehearse their presentations. Presumably, the students with the greatest grasp of the material will help the ones who may be struggling.
- The next step of bringing the students back into the individual Jigsaw groups is common to all lesson plans that follow this format. When the people are brought back into their original jigsaw groups and give their presentations it reinforces the notion of teamwork.
- Each student then makes a presentation of his or her information. In the case of a salt marsh, this can be vitally important because the success of a salt marsh depends on the ability of each plant or animal to use and contribute to the entire ecosystem. Because individual holds a key element of information, group members must respect, and pay attention or they will ultimately fail the coming at the end of the session.
- A quiz at the end of the session would involve all the vocabulary words, important facts about each plant and animal, along with how they interact with each other and the salt marsh. This quiz not only tests the student on their grasp of the facts it also is an indicator of their presentation and learning skills. This test also insures that the students take the process and the material seriously.
As the teacher, I would assess and evaluate individual and group performance using the tests as a tool to see which students understood their own segments and communicated that material. If an individual student was working on plants in a salt marsh and they failed that section, yet everyone else passed it that would indicate, the flaw was in that student’s ability to take the test. If he or she passed and everyone else failed, the problem would appear to be a communication problem. Because the students also write a paragraph with the five integrated facts, it gives an added dimension to assessment method.
Bibliography
Jigsaw Classroom. (2014). Jigsaw Overview. Retrieved from Jigsaw Classroom: http://www.jigsaw.org/overview.htm
