Issue Analysis: the Jigsaw

Pupils practise taking a local issue apart, in teams.

How long

45 to 75 minutes.

Who it is for

Upper primary and lower secondary.

How it is taught

Jigsaw group work, issue analysis, class discussion.

What you need

Three newspaper reports on one local argument connected to sustainability. They should not all take the same side.

What it is for

To teach pupils to read a newspaper report critically. They will learn about their own town on the way.

The words

Assumptions, manipulation, controversy.

The manual states these. What it does not state is not here.

The manual leaves this session untitled. The name is ours, taken from what the session says it is for; everything below is the manual's.

How it runs

The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.

01

Split the class into teams of three.
02

Give each member of a team a different one of the three reports. Each pupil reads their own report twice, in silence.
03

Now regroup. Everyone who read report one sits together, everyone who read report two, and so on. In these groups they work out the main points of their report and rehearse how they will explain it. Then the groups break up and the original teams of three come back together.
04

Each pupil explains their report to their team. The other two ask questions until they understand it.
05

Each team writes answers to four questions.
06

What is the argument about, and what has it to do with sustainability?
07

What arguments are being made?
08

What is being assumed without being said?
09

Where is the reader being pushed?
10

Then lead a class discussion, taking something from every team.

Safety

Pupils move around during this. Chairs stay where they are, and nobody gets shoved.

How the manual closes this session, and where it can go next.

How to end it

What did you learn today about newspapers as a source of information?

How you know it worked

Listen to the answers to the four questions, and to the closing one. They tell you a great deal about what has landed.

If it goes well

Run it again on a different argument. The repetition is what turns this into a skill rather than a lesson.

Bridge the Gap is a compilation. This is what the manual records for this session.

Clark, P. 2000. Teaching Controversial Issues, Green Teacher, Vol. 62.

Jigsaw Classroom. Jigsaw in 10 easy steps. http://www.jigsaw.org/steps.htm (Accessed July 1, 2010.)

Before you start sets out where the compendium as a whole comes from.

Where to go from here.

Next session

The theme

All eight themes

Understand the data