When you have information you need to communicate to students, an alternative to lecturing is a procedure for structuring cooperative learning groups called jigsaw (Aronson 1978).

Task: Think of a reading assignment you will give in the near future. Divide the assignment into three parts.  Plan how you will use the jigsaw procedure.  Script out exactly what you will say to your class in using each part of the jigsaw procedure.

Procedure:  One way to structure positive interdependence among group members is to use the jigsaw method of creating resource interdependence.  The steps for structuring a jigsaw lesson are.

1.  Cooperative Groups:  Distribute a set of materials to each group.  The set needs to be divisible by the number of members of the group.  Give each member one part of the set of materials.

2.  Preparation Pairs:  Assign students the cooperative task of meeting with a classmate in another learning group who has the same section of the material to complete two tasks:
a. Learning and becoming an expert on their material.
b. Planning how to teach the material to the other members of their groups.

3.  Practice Pairs:  Assign students the cooperative task of meeting with a classmate in another group who has learned the same material to share ideas about how the material might best be taught.  The best ideas form each pair member are incorporated into each member's presentation.

4.  Cooperative groups:  Assign students the cooperative tasks of:
a. Teaching their area of expertise to the other group members.
b.  Learning the material being taught by the other members.

5.  Evaluation:  Assess student's degree of mastery of all the material.  Reward the groups whose members all reach the preset criterion of excellence.