Tools For Teachers
Classroom Learning Skills   Frank Barnhill M.D.
 

Our goal in this session is to present techniques to help all kids learn in a more effective manner and therefore lessen the teacher’s workload and frustration. Emphasis will be placed on children who learn differently, such as ADHD, anxious and depressed kids. These children are threatened in some way by school and the classroom experience and can suffer anger, resentment, humiliation and embarrassment at the hands of other students.

Being different just seems to act as a “bad thing magnet” for these kids. They may do little to cause the unkind attention placed on them, but that doesn’t seem to stop it from occurring. As Hobbes in Calvin and Hobbes said of Calvin in a comic strip; “Does that black cloud hover over your head even when you’re asleep?” The black cloud that follows these kids can affect their emotional well being, social skills and of course dramatically affect their learning experience. So what is a teacher to do? As a teacher, you are charged with the responsibility to help each child learn to the best of his or her abilities. Here’s one answer that may give you lots of ideas.

A little over thirty years ago, Dr. Elliot Aronson, a prominent social psychologist developed a cooperative learning structure that he later named the “jigsaw classroom”. He was working with the newly just desegregated Austin Texas school system as it struggled to handle value, ethnic, emotional, and vast learning differences between it’s Hispanic, black and white school population. The classroom tool was eventually responsible for reducing obvious racial tensions, and helping kids learn to understand, appreciate, and accept their differences allowing friendships and learning support structures that would have been impossible to develop otherwise.

The “jigsaw classroom” concept involves separating all of the students in a class into five to six support learning groups. Each group is assigned a leader who shows strength in organization and study skills and acts as a motivator for the group. When a lesson is assigned to the group, it is split into as many parts and the students are encouraged to study together and help each other in learning all parts individually and collectively. Each student is told before hand that he or she must become an expert on their part and have general knowledge of the other’s pieces of the puzzle.

This tool works best when integrated into the classroom for only one or two hours each day. Obviously once a team’s kids learn forget their learning differences and work together for mutual benefit, they tend to master subjects easier, faster and grades improve accordingly. Research has shown students learned assignments in the jigsaw structure as well as or better than in traditional classroom environments. Students who learn in this manner develop more perception related skills and understand and empathize with others on a better level.

This classroom model does require you the teacher to be a coach when children are timid and won’t speak up, a facilitator in helping the kids learn to pay attention and ask questions, and a moderator who intervenes when a child tries to dominate the group. To learn more, please visit www.jigsaw.org, where you can download models and find links to other sites using jigsaw lesson plans.

Hopefully, this information will help you as a teacher reach your goals of teaching kids to their fullest potential. If you are successful, then all of society owes you a big thank you.

drhuggiebear, drhuggiebear.com and contained materials are the copyrighted and/or registered properties of Frank Barnhill, M.D. and may not be reproduced for profit without the express written permission of the author.  All materials may be photocopied in whole for educational use.  For information please contact us at drfrank@drhuggiebear.com.