Jigsaw: Native Americans

Last week in our class we participated in an intriguing activity method known as jigsaw. The main focus for this lesson was splitting the class into three home groups and then four expert groups. We researched four different types of Native American tribes. Within our expert groups we researched a particular tribe and later taught our home groups about our tribe.

I found that this method of learning is a great way to allow students to learn about many subgroups within one large group. I was extremely excited to learn about everyone's tribes to identify various similarities and differences. As the process continued it seemed that everyone within the classroom enjoyed listening about the different tribes and explaining the interesting and intricate facts and habits that they found from their specific tribe.

The last portion of our jigsaw project was a scavenger hunt! Dr. Smirnova has an experimental way of incorporating technology into our project, which made it one-hundred times better! She created twelve different questions about the different tribe habits, environments, skills, living situations, and hunting habits. Each question was placed in a folder "hidden" throughout the classroom. To see what each question was each group needed to download an app on our iPhones called barcode. Using the app we would scan the barcode and the question would appear! The first group to answer all of the questions first and correctly received a prized certificate of accomplishment.

Although, my group did not complete the scavenger hunt first I still learned so many interesting facts about different Native American tribes and their geographical incorporations. This was a new way to learn about geography and I am extremely thankful that I was able to participate in such an event!





Here is a picture of one of the barcode question sheets from the scavenger hunt: