Making Jigsaw Activities Using Newspaper Articles
David Dycus Department of the Study of Contemporary Society Aichi Shukutoku University 9 Katahira, Nagakute Nagakute-ho, Aichi-gun Aichi-ken, Japan 480-11
Introduction
Newspaper articles have long been a staple item in both reading and conversation classes because they are generally short, predictable in style, timely in content, and easy to find and use. However, the traditional method of having students read silently, answer comprehension questions, and then discuss an article can become boring to both students and teachers. An alternative to this traditional approach is turning articles into jigsaw activities, in which any one student only has a portion of the information needed to complete a task.
The advantage of jigsaw activities is that students must depend on each other for their information, so they must interact to accomplish a given task. The technique described below for making jigsaw activities from newspaper articles structures activities so that students read the text, hear the text, master new vocabulary, paraphrase, and interact at all stages of the activity (not at just the discussion stage, as in the traditional approach). In my experience, pre-intermediate to advanced students have almost all preferred using jigsaw newspaper articles to the traditional approach. The general procedure described below can be used with other types of texts as well as with newspaper articles. The description below is for a discussion class, but I have also used it with introductory sections of chapters in books as a warm-up activity for long texts. (For an informative discussion of the making and using of jigsaw activities, see the chapter devoted to it in C. Kessler’s (1992) Cooperative Language Learning: A Teacher`s Resource Book, published by Prentice Hall Regents).
Preparation
(Materials: a newspaper article, scissors, paste/glue/tape, prepared handouts with enough space to paste on sections of the article (see Fig. 1), and a complete copy of the article)
Select a newspaper article to suit your teaching purpose and student level. Decide how many sections into which you will divide all or part of it. (I recommend three, and no more than 4 sections, or the second group activity (see Procedure below) becomes time consuming.) If possible, enlarge it on a photocopying machine to make it easier for students to read and for you to cut and paste. Generally you will want to omit the first paragraph of an average article because it contains all the key information. Also omit any other sections which give away too much information. The goal is to select sections that 1) have just enough information to arouse the student’s interest in the rest of the story, 2) contain some information that overlaps with other sections but also 3) contain important information not found in other sections. Dividing the article up according to these criteria presents information in a way that forces students to develop and share hypotheses and to depend on others for information. Thus, the task of reading becomes an interactive problem-solving activity. Next, prepare a handout sheet with instructions for doing the activity (see Figure 1). The sheet should have enough blank space for the section of the article to be attached. Label each sheet differently as a way of making sure students in the first group activity (see Procedure below) have the same handout. I recommend using colors (e.g. blue, red and green) as labels instead of numbers or letters. When numbers (1, 2 and 3) or letters (A, B and C) are used, students often assume that they indicate the order in which the sections appear in the original article. Using colors avoids this problem. Try to keep the handout as general as possible so you can use it for a variety of articles, and keep master copies, sans article, for future use.
Procedure
(Total Time: 35-60 minutes, depending on student level and the difficulty of the article)
First Group Activity (Time: 10-20 minutes) 1. Divide the class into 3 or four groups, depending on how many sections you have selected from the newspaper article. (More than four sections usually takes too much time.) Give the same section of the article to each member of a particular group.
2. Have the students read the instructions carefully, noting the rules. Stress that for them to benefit most from the activity, they should go through their section of the article together until they are all satisfied that they understand it and can explain it to others. Insisting that they practice paraphrasing it lets them (and you) check their understanding of the section. Also, make sure they can explain all the vocabulary .
3. As a group, have the students write out two questions they would like to ask others to gain a better understanding of the entire article. Some groups may be slower at this than others. If time is short, be ready to either accept only one question or to suggest a few. Warning: In their questions students often refer to things like this problem or the man which have context only in reference