The critical issues with this strategy, as with many others, center around planning and managing the group activity. Because of the way in which group members must interact and depend on one another the groups need to be formed with some attention to maturity and personality issues. Depending on the age level of the learners teachers may use the groups to try and promote new relationships and engender trust and positive interaction or they may strive for groups that will be easily managed and guided into the activities planned.

The original jigsaw grouping strategy as developed and used in Texas in 1971 was built around a large group of 36 students. There were six home groups of six members each, and then six expert groups arose from a redistribution of those home groups. There are numerous other ways to group depending on how many students there are and how many expert topics can be taken from the overall concept being learned. The main point to remember is that each member of a home group must bear responsibility for a body of material to be brought back to the home group. If each student carries a particular piece of the puzzle then each student is critical to the success of the topic as a whole. This makes for a sense of importance and belonging for every student and allows the group as a whole to develop interpersonal skills that are cooperative rather than competitive in the classroom setting.