The Jigsaw Classroom

Jigsaw method supplies an environment for students that allows a strong interaction to learn from each other and gain significant interpersonal skills. To me, there are some various advantages and disadvantages for this method.

ADVANTAGES:

1.     Students can actively contribute to their learning process by exploring and transferring what they have learned about the topic to their friends.

2.     There are so many thoughts and knowledge in every brain and every one of them will share some information; therefore, when they talk about the topic, there will be many other thoughts that can lead to creating new projects within the students.

3.     Students improve their speaking, listening, writing and reading skills at the same time while doing some group activities, such as summarizing and discussing.

4.     In this cooperative process, they will be able to express themselves in a better way. They learn how to teach something, as well. In addition, students ask questions and defend the topic that they discuss. So, they learn how to defend themselves in a proper way. Shortly, they learn cooperative social skills, which help them in every area of their life.

5.     Students will be more active which make them more focused.  They will not be bored because with activities they will learn the information in an enjoyable way.

6.     A student must complete a given task, so every student has own responsibilities. Because each student is given a role and must do their duty to prosper in the subject and carry out the task properly.

7.     They must collaborate with each other to reveal a successful task, which provides an environment that knowing or understanding each other, recognizing the weakness and strength of one person. This will improve their observing skill.

DISADVANTAGES:

1.     Peer pressure can cause a lack of learning in this process. For example, groups of students must discuss and analyze a lecture, however, some of them cannot involve in the subject because of some problems, such as lack of self-confidence, feeling pressure while speaking, and lack of understanding the subject. A teacher cannot recognize them because there will not be a convenient environment for solving this problem.

2.     As we all know, there are a variety of different learning strategies for everyone. So, this method cannot work for some students who can study in independent ways. That’s why they can fail in this process even if they are successful students.

3.     Learning process depends on the other students’ knowledge so this can cause some problems or misunderstandings in some fields. Because a teacher cannot control every group at the same time.

4.     It can be hard for teachers to control students progress and that why they cannot evaluate each student in an effective way.

5.     Teachers cannot be aware of the students’ condition. To make it clear, even if they add or find something to appreciate, teachers cannot be aware of this situation, which make students angry, and maybe more outsider.

6.     Also, students can think like “why I effort to find something appreciates, the teacher will not recognize it anyway.” Eventually, most students will be lost and cannot find something different to catch their teacher’s attention, therefore; everything will become so ordinary.

7.     No personal encouraging or reinforcements like ‘congrats’, ‘awesome’ will cause a lack of motivation among the students.

8.     It will be hard for the teacher to control the classroom environment; the noise of the class can tire the teacher, which cause lack of energy to deal with the problems, manage the classroom, and aid their students.

9.     Some student cannot work well with other students. These students can cause a chaos within their groups which affect other students’ success and learning process in a negative way.

10. Some students can be more dominant in their groups, and direct other students. To clarify, the dominant students may give some students more duty than others may and the teacher cannot be aware of this problem and may not evaluate the task equitably, which cause injustice.

   To sum up, I have mentioned seven advantages and ten disadvantages of this method. To me, the method has more disadvantages than advantages because it has lack of controlling environment, appreciations and fair, which cause lack of motivation and failure among the students. On the other hand, we can use this method in such areas, like doing discussion, sharing knowledge, and creating new ideas.