Active Learning Strategies

Steps (Version 2)

1. Create “home” groups of 4 to 6 students.
2. Have one student from each home group join an “expert” group.
3. Get each expert group to work on one component of a larger problem.
4. After the expert groups are finished with their work, ask students return to their home groups.
5. Guide students to combine their knowledge or analyses in home groups to form a whole.
6. Direct home groups to present their interpretation to the rest of the class. Facilitate a discussion or debate and get students to explain their reasoning.

Example Jigsaw: Tsilhqot’in Motivations during The Chilcotin War

• Students are asked to develop a historical argument based on evidence drawn from six primary sources (documents or artifacts from the past). For example: “Why did the Tsilhqot’in warriors attack a road crew along the Homathko River near Bute Inlet in May 1864?”
  • Pro Tip! Make use of existing resources whenever you can. This example is based on resources and activities from Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History, Nobody Knows Him: Lhatŝ’aŝʔin and the Chilcotin War.
• In their home groups (Figure 1), students develop a working theory based on their knowledge drawn from the textbook, maps, readings, and other secondary sources. You might ask them to draw up a timeline, highlight important contextual factors, themes related to the question, etc.
• Students leave their home groups and each joins a different expert group.
• Each expert group (Figure 2) studies a different document. Each student reads the document on their own and answers a series of questions about it (e.g., who wrote it, when, why, what is the message, etc.) and looks for evidence related to the question.
• They share their findings and each student combines the evidence together in a matrix which they will take back to their home group.
• Returning to their home groups, students share what they found in their expert groups and use the evidence to formulate and defend an argument (their answer to the question).
• Home groups present and discuss their arguments with the rest of the class.