Pogil

I went to a presentation by Rick Moog on Monday 23 March on the Pogil, Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning. The 2 hour session was run as a Pogil class with the chemistry teachers learning about banking. Each teacher had a resource of questions that had to be answered and discussed within a group of three teachers. The learning was built up in this way. After a week I could probably explain most of what I learnt in that session, even though it was new to me.
I went back to school and on Thursday tried this with year 12 chemistry class on a new topic; Quantiative chemistry. I had a "do now" on units and significant figures. This was the last day of term so nothing would be lost if it did not work. I had enlarged the worksheet to A3 so the students would be forced to work together. This was not a success in some groups as one student filled in the sheet on their own. When each student fills on their own sheet then they will have greater participation. The significant figures part could have been better scaffolded. Most groups did not get half way through so one activity could last 2 periods, also faster groups could go on to the next activity. This could be a way of doing differentiated learning. The Pogil activity involves thinking skills.