3 Years of POGIL at Fossil Ridge High School

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3 Years of POGIL at Fossil Ridge High School

• Mark Morehouse and Melissa Vigil

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Year OneWe are all in, but what are we going to
do tomorrow???

• Successes

• Challenges

• We made it through the year!
• Wrote, revised and borrowed a lot of lessons
• More interaction with students
• Exciting to do something new
• Partner teachers in same building was crucial to
  sticking with POGIL

• Not much POGIL material available
• Unsure how to effectively use roles and provide
  feedback on group effectiveness
• Tried several different feedback and report
  forms
• Grading POGIL activities
• Created class notebooks
• Pushback from students who prefer traditional
  classroom

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After Year One

• What We Kept

• What We Changed

• POGIL classroom
• GALT assessment
• Used to create heterogeneous groups
• Many lessons
• Class notebooks

• Roles
• Dropped Recorder Equipment Manger/Reader
• Created Process Analyst Quality Control
• Kept Facilitator Spokesperson
• Rewrote role descriptions
• Created process analyst form
• Room arrangement
• Stopped using the word POGIL

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New Room Arrangement
Minimized distance between group members to
increase interaction
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Year Two

• Successes

• Challenges

• Individual and student group performance
• Students struggled to be effective in roles if
  they didnt have strong interpersonal skills
• How do we give students meaningful feedback on
  how they are working in their groups?
• How do we teach kids to be active and effective
  learners in groups?
• Process Analyst form had little buy in and did
  not help individuals
• No grade motivation for students

• Access to HSPI and more lessons
• More positive student participation
• New room arrangement
• Better group cohesion and performance
• Changed groups once/quarter and noticed stages of
  group formation (forming, norming, storming,
  performing)

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Process Skills Competency Model

• Tier 1 Personal Effectiveness

• Tier 3 Workplace Competencies

• Interpersonal Skills
• Integrity
• Professionalism
• Lifelong Learning

• Facilitator
• Spokesperson
• Quality Control
• Process Analyst

Tier 2 Academic Competencies

• Content specific to course

Bruce Wellman from Olathe Northwest High School
deserves all credit for this model and his
extensive work on it
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After Year Two

• What We Kept

• What We Changed

• POGIL classroom
• Roles no changes
• Lessons and class notebooks
• Room arrangement

• Developed process competencies model
• Personal and role competencies
• Feedback system and self reflective assignment
• Videos used to teach personal effectiveness
  skills
• Facilitation style fewer class check-ins,
  more group check-ins

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"Building Blocks" for Competency ModelsU. S.
Department of Labor, Employment and Training
Administration
This reference source consists of a set of
"building blocks" for competency model
development. These "building blocks" are arranged
in nine tiers including 1
1 Taken from http//www.careeronestop.org/Compe
tencyModel/pyramid_definition.aspx (accessed May
2010)
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"Building Blocks" for Competency ModelsU. S.
Department of Labor, Employment and Training
Administration

• Occupation Related
• Tier 9 -- Management Competencies
• Tier 8 -- Occupation-Specific Requirements
• Tier 7 -- Occupation-Specific Technical
  Competencies
• Tier 6 -- Occupation-Specific Knowledge
  Competencies
• Industry Related
• Tier 5 -- Industry-Specific Technical
  Competencies
• Tier 4 -- Industry-Wide Technical Competencies
• Foundational Competencies
• Tier 3 -- Workplace Competencies
• Tier 2 -- Academic Competencies
• Tier 1 -- Personal Effectiveness
• 1 This model was crafted from materials from
  the U.S. Department of Labor and contextualized
  for a high school environment by Bruce Wellman
  (Olathe Northwest High School, Olathe, KS) and
  the Hach Foundations Northern Colorado POGIL
  Collaboration for Chemistry Teachers.

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Personal Effectiveness

• Interpersonal Skills
• Speaks clearly confidently with appropriate eye
  contact with audience
• Applies active listening skills (reflection,
  restatement, questioning, clarification)
• Integrity
• Treats others honestly, fairly, courteously
• Accepts responsibility for ones decisions
  actions
• Professionalism
• Accepts feedback attempts to learn from
  mistakes misunderstandings
• Manages conflict respectfully while maintaining
  progress towards goal
• Demonstrates positive attitudes towards work and
  others
• Lifelong Learning
• Seeks feedback asks questions to strengthen own
  understanding
• Uses newly learned knowledge skills to complete
  specific tasks

All credit to Bruce Wellman
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Workplace Competencies

• Facilitator
• Utilize systematic method to insure every members
  contribution towards goal
• Maintains efficient pacing through the activity
• Asks purposeful questions to insure comprehension
  of every group member
• Spokesperson
• Utilize active listening to clarify groups
  question before seeking outside help
• Seeks appropriate and timely assistance when the
  group needs help
• Quality Control
• Employs systematic method to insure correct
  comparable quality answers
• Respectfully provides feedback when a written
  discrepancy is discovered
• Process Analyst
• Provide respectful and constructive feedback on
  role and personal effectiveness competencies and
  suggests ways the group can work better

All credit to Bruce Wellman
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Video Examples of Personal Effectiveness Skills

• Video 28 Positive example of accepting feedback
• Video 31 Negative example of accepting feedback
• Students only provide feedback in the form of
  positive evidence of another student having a
  skill!

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Year Three

• Successes

• Challenges

• Still POGILing
• Better student buy in
• More front loading on goals of the course (learn
  chemistry, how to learn, how to work and learn
  with other people)
• Interpersonal skills instruction, feedback, and
  reflection truly awesome

• Struggling to cover all of course material
• Need more lab based activities or hands-on
  lessons / variety
• Feedback system takes time
• Didnt follow through 2nd semester with role
  competencies but plan to next year

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Quotes from a Students Personal Effectiveness
Reflection

• When other students asked me for help it
  reinforced my understanding because being able to
  teach something shows that you have the highest
  level of knowledge about it. Using almost
  exclusively group assignments like we do helps me
  learn the concepts better and also remember them
  better. I feel like the first semester of
  chemistry went very well for me and it was
  because of the learning process that we used in
  the class.

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Quotes from a Students Personal Effectiveness
Reflection

• From this class I learned that I'm smarter than
  I like to give myself credit for, and I had to
  face an academic laziness that I had been in
  denial about. I realized this when our groups
  shifted and I no longer had super-smart Kevin to
  lean on. I had thought I didn't know how to do
  the work. But as soon as I was placed in a group
  with a more balanced skill level, I realized that
  somewhere along the way, I had learned how to do
  the work. I just lacked the motivation to do
  it..I also came to realize that while I
  probably won't spend every day of the rest of my
  life analyzing the electronegativities of
  different atoms, I actually have learned
  things that have practical applications in my
  life. Even if I don't become a chemical engineer,
  the interpersonal skills I've accumulated or
  strengthened throughout this class will benefit
  me wherever I go.

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Quotes from a Students Personal Effectiveness
Reflection

• The personal effectiveness competencies table
  and the POGIL system have clearly been
  benefitting me in chemistry so far this first
  semester. Reflecting on my strengths and
  weaknesses have made me become more aware of how
  I am interacting with the other students in my
  group and what I can work on to improve and what
  I am doing a good job of so far. Obviously, I
  have enjoyed how our class is set up and the
  personal effectiveness aspect of it.

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Quotes from a Students Personal Effectiveness
Reflection

• This class has made me realize that I want to
  help other people. I always thought of myself as
  one who just wants to get the facts. Ive never
  really been asked to help other people learn what
  is being taught. We just had to find out on our
  own. None of my other classes do much group work,
  so this has been a huge change. It made me see
  that I am not as shy as I once thought I was. I
  have become much more confident in who I am..It
  has changed who I was from the beginning of this
  year. I have learned to become a people-person.

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Quotes from Students Personal Effectiveness
Reflection

• This personal effectiveness activity really
  helped me see my strengths and my weaknesses, but
  without this activity I don't think I would have
  been paying attention to how I was acting in my
  group or be as aware as I was in my group. With
  this activity I really learned how to be an
  active part in my group and to really respect my
  group members. Also at the beginning of the
  semester I don't think I was as outspoken about
  what I thought or as outspoken with any questions
  that I may have had. This activity has really
  helped me be unafraid to ask questions with my
  group members and be unafraid to state my
  thoughts or opinions. Without this activity I may
  not have been as active in my group as I should
  be or I may have done some things differently
  that would not have been right . In closing, I
  say that this activity was a great eye opener and
  a great way to help me better understand how I
  should act, speak, and treat others in my group.

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Quotes from Students Personal Effectiveness
Reflection

• I really gained a lot of insight on myself. I
  think this should be applied to jobs I think that
  it would really help the communication and
  provide a more positive and more efficient
  work-force. Overall, I learned more about myself
  and how I can be a better person, and a better
  student. Now I know why we do such a silly
  thing!

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Northern Colorado HACH Group

• 3 year program funded through the HACH Scientific
  Foundation was key to commitment and
  implementation by teachers
• Different teachers have different interests and
  skills
• Support and continued collaboration with teachers
  in our building and region was a cornerstone of
  implementation despite rigor of being away from
  our classrooms
• Pay and credits encouraged teacher
  participation

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Northern Colorado Hach Group