Jigsaw and Graffiti cooperative learning approaches

The jigsaw method intends to give importance to each students in the class, so each is necessary for the success of the group. For example, if I wanted to teach about the different Kingdoms in taxonomy, I would divide my class into groups of seven, called "home" groups. Each individual would be responsible for acquiring knowledge about one kingdom, ie. Animals or Archaebacteria. Then individuals leave the home group to try and learn more about their assigned area by forming an expert group, ie. all the students assigned to Archaebacteria meet and thoroughly learn about Archeabacteria. Then students return to their home groups and report their knowledge. The home groups then have to make a cohesive final product, whether that's a paper, poster, or presentation. I could definitely use a methods like this when teaching biology.

The Graffiti method is when groups are given a large block of paper to write brainstorming ideas on. Then they re-write the information in an organized way with meaningful categories. Again with taxonomy, I could ask students to write down anything they know about living things, such as types of living things, traits of living things, and adaptations. Then they could try and organize it much like original taxonomers did.

Why I teach

I became a teacher because I knew I wanted to work with high school students and I love biology. It seemed like a good fit. I also like that it is a family oriented job in the sense that evenings, weekends, holidays, and breaks are generally off. As I'm nearing the family stage of life, the opportunity to be with family is important to me so I stay well-rounded. I continue to teach because I like it so much more than i expected to, and I think I'm getting better at it. I know I'm relatively new, but I'm growing as a teacher and learning still. My greatest strengths are that I care about the students, I'm flexible, and I know the material. I'm still working on follow-through with discipline. I've worked with college-aged students the last few years who spoiled me with ideal behavior. I teach required material using different methods in an effort to reach the needs of as many students as possible. I use hands-on activities, labs, notes, readings, and A/V material. Often the material in biology is something you can't really see or touch, like meiosis, so I have to get creative.