Vocabulary Jigsaw Activity Instruction

By Jessica Cinco

This can be used for any course requiring students to learn new vocabulary
(reading, writing, listening, speaking, or any other course). I often do this activity
at the beginning of a new lesson, before the students ever open their books and
look at the new vocabulary listed in their textbooks. This jigsaw activity is very
student-centered, so the teacher facilitates and walks around the class as the
groups are working, but this involves very little actual instruction on the teacher’s
part. Essentially, the students are teaching themselves and each other!

TIME: 20 to 40 minutes, depending on how fast the students work and/or how
fast the teacher pushes the students.

MATERIALS NEEDED: “Jigsaw Vocabulary Activity” worksheet and students

need their cell phones, electronic dictionary or paper dictionary.

1. Open the Excel file entitled “Jigsaw Vocabulary Activity” (attached below
this file in). The teacher should write new vocabulary words in the cells
below “WORD.” (If using more than 20 words, add more rows.) Then print
for your class.
2. In class, divide students into equal groups. (Example: If you have 20
students, divide the class into groups of 4 or 5. If you have an uneven
amount of students, one or two groups may have more students than the
others)
3. Assign each group specific words.
a. Example: You have 5 groups of 4 students and 20 vocabulary, so
i. Group 1 is assigned Words 1-4
ii. Group 2 is assigned Words 5-8
iii. Group 3 is assigned Words 9-12
iv. Group 4 is assigned Words 13-16
v. Group 5 is assigned Words 17-20
4. Each group must look up and write the
a. Pronunciation (using IPA or any other phonetic alphabet)
b. Part of speech (use abbreviations like n=noun, v=verb, etc)
c. Meaning (write the definition in ENGLISH)
d. Other Forms (if the vocabulary words is “beautiful,” students should
write “beautify,” “beautify,” “beautifully,” etc)
 5. While students are defining the new words, the teacher should be walking
around the class, and checking with the students to ensure they have the
correct definitions as English words often have more than one meaning
AND sometimes electronic dictionaries or dictionary websites provide less
than accurate information.
6. After 5-15 mins (when all groups are done), assign each group member a
new number.
a. So, if you have 4 people in Group 1, one member is assigned 1, the
next is 2, 3 and 4. Assign each person in every group a new number
(1 through 4)
7. People with the same number should form new groups (all the 1s are in one
group, 2s, 3s, 4s, etc).
8. Now, each person in the new group is an “expert” on the words they defined
as a representative from Groups 1-4 should be present in the new group.
Each new group member takes turns sharing their information on the
vocabulary word. As each “expert” is speaking, the other group members
are filling in the missing information on their vocabulary handout. This
should take about 10 minutes or so.
9. After everyone has all the information on each vocabulary word, the teacher
can quiz the students verbally about the meanings to check for
understanding. For example, “Which word means…….?” Or “What is the
verb from of……?”

Modifications
 Depending on what your class is focusing on, teachers can delete columns
from the worksheet. For example, you can delete the “Pronunciation”
column if your students aren’t familiar with IPA (international pronunciation
alphabet.)

Extensions:
 If you have more time in class and want to extend this activity, students can
work in groups and write sentences with the new words. They can share
their sentence with the class on the board. This is a great time for the
teacher ensure students understand the words and give explanations if
students’ sentences reflect incorrect understanding of the words.
 If you don’t have much time left in class, you can also assign homework.
Students can write some (or all) of the vocabulary words in sentence and
give you their work the next day.
 Game option: In groups, students write sentences for the vocabulary word.
Then, one member from one group goes to the board and writes the
sentence, but omits the vocabulary word. The other groups must guess the
correct vocabulary word based on the sentence’s context.