A Jigsaw Puzzle and Effective Teaching
Swen Nater

I don’t remember when exactly it was that I tried to put my first jigsaw puzzle together, but I do remember it was frustrating. I didn’t know where to start and all the pieces looked so much alike. However, as I gained experience, I began to create a system that made puzzle-building faster. I’m sure you already know the step-by-step system:

1. Put the corners in place.
2. Build the edge pieces.
3. Connect the corners and edges.
4. Build clusters by color.
5. Connect clusters.
6. Connect clusters and edges.

But there is one obvious step missing—looking at the entire picture before you start. It really helps, doesn’t it? Suppose I gave you 1,000 puzzle pieces but no picture. It would take you forever to put the pieces together because you couldn’t see how they were connected. However, if I gave you the picture—the finished product—you would say, “Now you’re cooking with gas!” and you would commence putting the puzzle together, using something like the system above.

When you combine seeing the picture and using the step-by-step system for connecting the pieces, you are using “The Whole-Part Method.” The Whole-Part Method was one part of Coach Wooden’s Trinity of Teaching [my title]. The other two parts were: The Laws of Learning and teaching Step-by-Step.

The Whole
When teaching us a basketball play (i.e. UCLA Cut), Coach Wooden had five players walk through the play in slow motion as he stopped it many times to explain how, when, and why things were to be done, all the while asking us if we understood. It was important to Coach that we could visualize the play working and why it worked.

The Parts
When putting a puzzle together, you first do the corners and then the edges. Next, you combine the corners and edges to form the complete perimeter. When working on the parts, Coach Wooden used the same methodology. After showing the Whole, he divided the team up into three groups (usually Guards, Forwards, and Centers), each working with a coach on a different Part. After a while, he combined two of those Parts. Last, he added the third Part to recreate the Whole.

The Importance of Clearly Showing the Whole
Unlike with a puzzle, where the picture is available all the while you connecting the pieces, in sports, that model is only seen at the beginning, when it is explained and demonstrated. As the Parts are worked on, the players must remember how and why each Part is connected to the Whole and that might be difficult. For that reason, Coach Wooden understood the importance of painting a complete and clear depiction of what he had in mind as the finished product. He demonstrated and explained in great detail and repeated it many times so we would carry that clear mental picture with us as we worked on the Parts. For us players, his clear presentation of the Whole, created relevancy and meaning to each Part throughout the learning process, something we call “student engagement.” At UCLA, engagement accelerated learning and that meant more achievement and progress per minute, something that set Coach Wooden apart from the rest. I bet he was pretty good at puzzles.

Classroom Application of the Whole-Part Method
The Whole-Part Method can work in the classroom. Imagine a high school US History teacher beginning his first class session by saying,

Winston Churchill, the great prime minister of the United Kingdom, said, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Ladies and gentlemen, we will learn a lot of facts in this class but if all we do is put information into our heads, we have robbed ourselves of what those facts can teach us. We may get good grades on every exam but if we don’t use the right answers to answer the questions our nation is asking us right now, we will be intellectual nothings. A wheel was made to help transport things, not to sit idle and look good. And the purpose of learning US History is not to sit idle with head knowledge, but rather to use it to rekindle what made this nation great, and to make sure the mistakes we made will not happen again. Yes, the reason we learn US History is to make tomorrow’s US better. We learn US History, not to be book smart, but to make a difference for us, our children, and their children. 

So here’s what we’re going to do. Each time we learn one of those lessons, we’re going to write it down in this book. Right now it’s blank but by the end of the year, it’s going to full. And when it is, we are going to mail a copy to the President of the United States and our US Congressmen and Congresswomen. We are also going to write an article, which will contain the lessons we learned, and send it to every newspaper in this state. And Winston Churchill, from somewhere, is going to be smiling.

Throughout the school year, from the Revolutionary War to the end of the text book, a classroom full of engaged students will be looking for lessons to enter into the book and, hopefully, cause someone in Washington DC to consider not letting bad history repeat itself. That, my friends, is the Whole-Part Method applied to the classroom.