Over the last few weeks, I’ve been running an online workshop looking at web tools that are used in teaching. The teachers taking part have come up with so many good ideas for using it, I thought I’d share some on my blog.
I’ll start with jigzone, a site I thought might have limited appeal but the following ideas prove otherwise. For those of you that don’t know jigzone it’s a site that takes a picture and makes puzzle out of it.
So here are some ways to use it
1. Setting Context
Using a picture from to set the context e.g.
“A puzzle could be useful for context. Find a picture that represents a proverb / idiom and put it in a puzzle. As students are putting the pieces together they will start to get the bigger picture. Students are then encouraged to speak about the picture they have assembled then the proverb is to be introduced to them. Hopefully this will help them remember the proverb and thus they will remember the vocabulary better.”
“An excellent way to get students discussing a new topic. What is it about? Where the photo was taken? How old is the photo? It could really be used for any subject.”
“Appropriate pictures can be used to contextualise language areas e.g. one of the someone in a poor situation for giving advice or conditionals”
2. News headlines
“First students put the news photo jigsaw together and then brainstorm headlines that might accompany it. Then they have a go at putting the actual headline jigsaw together.”
3. Story telling
Utilisng jigzone and collaborative work
“1-Teacher prepare more than a puzzle with different stories, send links to the students, next day, each student tell the class their story.
2- each student only have a part of the story and need to ask others to know the rest of the story.
3- students only have a part of the story and they should make up the rest of the story.”
4. Word and letter recognition
“This technique could be useful to visually remember how a word looks like
It would be great for early stages and especially for students who are resisting the learning or seeing the new script as scratches. This could be used with basic words to construct a level of recognition for letters.”
“We could use this as an aid to spelling, to get students to recognise the shapes of letters and words”
5. Language work
“Speculative language – getting students to put in images of themselves, look at each others’, speculate about the identity of the person, assemble and check, expressing their gradually increasing (un)certainty as they go. Note that the picture is shown the left corner so you would need to cover that.”
“A very simple one first for an elementary lesson, after explaining the concept, we used prepositions of place (on the far left, in the corner, in the middle of the right side, etc.) to locate different pieces to connect. After we fitted all the pieces together, students described the picture (again prepositions like in the center, next to the tree, etc.). It went well, feedback was positive.”
“At elementary or preinermediate levels it can be used to match the past tense of irregular verbs. In vocabulary development, for opposites, collocations. The bad thing is that you can only use pictures, which of course, add variety and fun to your classes, especially those for young learners”
“Guess the object is the name of the game (questions forms). Students are divided in teams and every time a student puts two pieces together or fits one piece, they get a chance to ask a “yes”- “no” question about the object to the teacher. The team that guesses first is the winner.”
“Directions. Divide the students into two teams. Then get them to take turns giving directions, as to where each piece should go. Each correct move gets a point. The team with the most points”
“Modals of deduction / negotiating – In f2f classes, in teams of 3/computer. Each team can move one piece at a time only when the teacher says “move”. Groups have to decide which piece to move (negotiated in English if possible). Set time limit to decide at 40 seconds. The objective is to discover what the item is using language a making deductions/speculations: “it must/may/might/could/can’t be”, and responding to each other’s suggestions. I just tried to make a jigsaw”
6. Reacting to a picture
“In addition it could be a written, as well as a speaking exercise. Write your thoughts on the photograph. Then possibly discuss with a partner, your different views/ideas.”
7. Vocabulary
“Fantastic way to teach kids vocabulary and help them remember new words
topic-related vocabulary
– e.g. teach animal vocabulary: click on mixed animals – show a picture of a cat – get them to do a 6-piece jigsaw – repeat again with other animals
ν e.g. teach house vocabulary – find pictures related to the house – upload the photos in an album that you create on My JigZone Space”
Thanks to Alejandra Garcia, Christina Kaku, Carmen Guillen, Tanya Charles, Catherine Palgrave, Tom Scott, Christina Cattaneo, Heather Jeffery, Annabelle Gauci Borda, Muhammad Farag, Rolf Donald, Michael Rovers, Mohamed Amin for their ideas.
