Jigsaw Cooperative Learning Activity Blog #3

1.  If my classroom only had five computers, I would group the kids that had to work on the same subject together.  Making sure of course that they were of different ethnicity and gender.   They could do their research together, giving each person of that team a turn at reading and deciding what information was important.  Assigning 5 students per computer that would be 25 students being able to accomplish common goals on 5 computers.  Each group would have the different areas of the same subject to work on with each student having a turn to do research and pick out what they felt was important information.  I would assign a team leader to oversee each group to make sure that everyone gets their turn and everyone contributes.

2.  The advantage of this method would be teaching the students to work well together, helping them see that they are not all that different from each other, and maybe finding that they can learn a great deal from each other, as far as culture, different ways to learn things, shared knowledge, forming strong and trusting relationships with their peers, and seeing how effective and successful team work is versus working alone.

3.  The disadvantages could be, that regardless of how hard we may try as teachers and leaders to come up with ways to help children in the classroom get along and appreciate each other for who they are, hatred and racism often comes from the home and the parents.  That can be very difficult to change, and the parents can do much harm by forbidding their child to work with another child of a particular race.  Noise level can also be disruptive if rules are not set before hand.  Another road block to consider is children with a disabilities in the group. One of the computers may have to have assistive devices on it.  Overall I see this as being a very effective way to teach a large group of children.

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