P hug Welcome back everybody. You're listening to episode three of season three of the Poggle podcast. Season three is all about the practice of Poggle. Each episode deals with a different aspect of facilitation in the Poggle classroom. My name is Wayne Pearson and our interviewer today is Alex Grewshaw. Hello Alex. Good morning. Good afternoon. Hello Wayne. Hi Alex. How are you? Good. Good. Good.
Okay. I see that today's episode is all about roles. What types of roles are we talking about? Dinner roles, finger roles, crescent roles? Actually we're going to talk about Poggle roles or roles in Poggle teams as they work in the classroom. With that, I'm going to roll with it. Okay. That sounds great. I think it's time I turned it over to you.
All right. Sounds good. So as I said, we're going to talk about how things work within a team instead of a Poggle classroom and in particular talk about roles that we use within those teams. And we've found within the Poggle project that it's important to use roles and basically we're going to talk about how facilitators use roles to promote student learning and growth in the classroom. And with me today is Kristen Drury who teaches chemistry at high school level on Long Island, New York.
And Rodney Austin who teaches organic and biochemistry at the college level in Western Pennsylvania. Welcome to you both. Hello. It's good to be here. Hello. All right. So, so I just want to open this up by having you briefly describe what the traditional roles are in a Poggle team and how they function within the team. Who wants to go first? Okay. I guess I can talk first. The first major role we have as a manager.
They usually have make sure all the members of their team are fulfilling their role, signing tasks if needed, making sure they're paying attention at the time, and then all the team members are participating. Okay. The second role we typically have in a traditional Poggle classroom is that of the presenter. And the role of the presenter is really to ask questions of the instructor for one, but then also to report out orally.
That's your team answer or also sometimes to write that on a blackboard or a whiteboard so they're actually presenting the data so saying something like, here's what our group found. Okay. Kristen, what's next? A third role could be recorder. They would record the names and their roles of group members at the beginning of the class, and they can also record important aspects of the group discussion observations or any insights they had.
Our fourth role typically is reflector, and that person observes and reports on the team dynamics and behavior while learning and they can also help the team reflect on content material so they might help the team think about two models, two related models or two related concepts, and how they can both help you learn something about it. So they might say something like, let me see if everyone has finished this question before we move on.
So they're really helping the team reflect on what they know. Okay. But, you know, I know from, you know, going to meetings and workshops. There are a lot of other variations on some of these roles. Or, you know, actually, you know, what do you do if you have five people in a team, or what do you do if you have only three people on a team so can you tell us a little bit about some of the other functions that we might see in team work.
So yeah so sometimes you know if you're talking about different sizes of teams you know you can actually have someone be both the recorder and the reflector right so those roles in some ways go hand in hand. Sometimes you know, maybe a manager and a presenter perhaps but it'd be less likely perhaps. Another role that you could have, maybe if you have a five person team or maybe if it's a different type of days you can have a role of a model builder.
Maybe you have a physical model or some sort of manipulative that you're using that person can be in charge and really hope this the team built the model so they might go to the front and get the materials the kit that's needed for that, and they might sort of help direct the team and actually building the model. Oh, I can, and I can see where that would work. That would happen a lot in organic chemistry. Right, I mean, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's something you actually do in your classroom or.
Yeah, yeah I do in my organic chemistry and we oftentimes we have a class of about 60 or so so I'll have little baggies of kits of model so they'll have you know carbons hydrogens and bonds, and that type of thing and the one the students will come down and get that and so we'll build structures to demonstrate a concept like RNs or something along those lines and also works in biochemistry as well.
We'll build alpha helices and they'll use pipe cleaners and a few other things. Yeah, so that one can be really good. Kristen you got something else for us. Sure. I'm at the high school level we have a lot of English language learners and students who are more auditory learners or so they think.
And so I have a reader incorporated my rules they read all the passages and questions out loud. They can stop and have everybody read them again, if they need to internally, but it's really nice for certain students to hear all the directions and passages
out loud for their processing skills, so the reader is one role and another one is ambassador which some people I guess call a spy is kind of cute, where if I'm really busy working with another team, the ambassador can use their role card to move to another team and ask a quick question to see if they can get clarity before I come back over. Oh, so in the case, so I'll just jump in here. So the spy. I like that. Or ambassador is basically somebody who can float to a different team.
Right, and talk with them. Okay. Sometimes you can actually, if you have large groups, like many teams you can say these three teams can spy on each other and those three teams can spy on each other and then they can use that student as a, almost like a team stay but one stray so they can share data just like slightly differently than if you would on a computer or whiteboards.
Okay, okay. Yeah, that does, those sounds really interesting. It's interesting because for me and again I teach it at the college level. I typically have my presenters, be the readers, as you indicate and then the ambassador or spy would be actually the reflector. You know, so, so I will sort of incorporate some of those so this sounds interesting.
You know, the idea that we can utilize multiple people to do different things, and then come back and sort of put it all together I think is really an important aspect of working in teams. Now, the, the use of roles in the PO classroom is part of the, the PO in PO, the process oriented piece. Some of the process skills that we're trying to help students develop come straight from using these roles.
So I was hoping you might briefly give your view on the value of using roles in the PO classroom, and what skills, the students develop. I know you sort of touched on a few of these things, but like really what is the value of doing this in your classroom when you're like in the case of the three of us, we all teach chemistry. So what's the value in doing this. I am sadly aware that not all my students will become chemists, when they get older.
So, I use the idea of roles and using Pogals as a buy in for all of chemistry my whole class. So I say, you know, if you learn a small amount of chemistry that enhances your life. I'm happy. And if you learn a larger amount of chemistry that makes you want to be a chemist, I'm ecstatic, but I'm even just as happy if you leave my class, having a little bit more command of how you learn and command of how you interact with other
people, you're no matter what job you have you're most likely going to have to work with other people, and to improve your communication skills, your way of organizing information and coming up with critical thinking and problem solving skills I think that's super important for any other thing especially chemistry, of course, but for anything from a carpenter to a data software engineer or something like that.
Yeah, I agree with Christmas you know she's saying most of her students will become chemists thing at the college level right so we have a lot of biologists and I have a lot of engineers and some nurses and you know this year I think I have three or four chemists in my class on the static because I don't have that.
Yeah, so yeah so thinking about all these other skills one of the things, kind of like communication that type of thing is, you know, we often think about metacognition that's one of the things we talked about in public and of course that's just really thinking and reflecting on one's own thinking
and how we learn and what one's knowledge is. And so I think having the role particularly of like reflector and then maybe couple a little bit with recorder can help students, you know, if they're not a chemist you know their engineer biologists know what they're, they really know and what they don't know, because sometimes they'll just see it you know chemistry is that checkbox that's, make sure I get that class in so we can move on.
And so having those students sort of reflect on what as a team they're doing well maybe individually can help and oftentimes think a lot of people have reporters report so they have to fill out a little sheet at the end of the activity, and the reflector helps the team sort of think through, what do we know what do we don't know and you know common practice would be to have like our what's the muddiest point for your team the most unclear point.
And so then the reflector helps them think through that and they can write something down. I sometimes have students rate the like a question or a statement on a Likert scale one to five you know like something along the lines of our team could easily solve a problem with the ideal gas law or something and so the five would be agree one would be disagree.
And so you can see that and sometimes you know you'll get a team and you'll even see that you're probably not doing so well but they're saying five we completely agree, but you can learn something there as well that they're really probably not thinking it through or maybe the little self to self confident. I really like when those ratings when the students will give me like a 3.5 or a 4.5 because I just give 12345.
And so they're really thinking about or they've taken a poll and averaged it. And so that shows me they're sort of really thinking reflecting on how much they know and often when I hand those back I'll say I like your honesty here 4.5 or right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean they just didn't circle five they went through it and so.
And then also sometimes an open comment I'll just say you know give me a comment I often say related to chemistry or cheesy or anything you know and they'll, I'll get jokes and all sorts of things but sometimes you know, I'll get a comment like really like
we're struggling with this or man we're really struggling with this and so I, I think you know it gives them a chance to pause and to think about what they do and don't know and you know maybe in a lecture they won't necessarily take that time or they won't have that time built in to or maybe if it's an unstructured group they won't have that time built in.
And I mean it's really, really important to make sure that they get that five minutes at the end of class to do some reflection and and you know write some more things down on on you know whatever recorder sheet or whatever you're using to communicate
with. One of the things that I was reading about the summer. It had nothing to do with Pogel but somebody was said that you should really frame the end of the class when students are reporting back is not, you know, does anybody have any questions, but I basically
say, ask me a question, you know, and that is now at the bottom of my recorder sheets, so it's basically, you know, and some of them is, you know, like, so how was your weekend, you know, but sometimes it's like they are really like asking a question that, you know, it's very insightful of something that you know happened in the last 10 minutes, and it's great because I can use that to start the next class.
I will admit that early in my use of Pogel, I did not really understand the importance of roles and I found it very difficult to start using roles in the classroom. I was not someone who, who, like, sort of saw the value in it. And so, what do you say to someone who has some trepidation about using roles and we would just like rather let the students, you know, sit down in a team and just work collaboratively.
Yeah, I've really found that that teamwork, the teamwork part of it really does help sort of just to accelerate maybe is about can this catalyze that react that the reaction you're going to catalyze that interaction maybe of the students. And, you know, I was reaching out to a couple of students, this summer you know known this Pogel podcast was coming out, and one of my students graduate school she said you know I love the roles.
She said because I didn't have to invest, you know, cognitive load and they're thinking about am I saying too much saying too little, who's going to speak and she said it really reduced my anxiety just having the role and knew it knowing her role in the group. And so she really was thankful for that and I think honestly thankful because she's often talked, you know, we've emailed back and forth about the Pogel.
She doesn't call Pogel but that that type of learning that she had and it really helped her. And so I really think you know it does sort of help with that interaction but also particular times that it does help is like very beginning of the semester when you're introducing this or maybe have new teams, it gives them roles. And so I mean besides just normal daily that really just helps them be able to talk to one another without having really that awkward silence that is there.
If it's maybe an unstructured one. And so that can really help out and I know a couple of my students even said yeah you know that first week, those roles are great for getting us talking because I didn't know anybody else, you know as a relatively large class. Another way that's maybe not quite classroom based, you know traditional classroom basis I have some water testing I do with students they test water from local municipal source and I usually have four of them.
And I usually don't know each other and they can be biologists chemists and engineers. And so I just have assigned them started signing them roles the very first day and usually the most experienced person. I just make them the manager and sometimes it's a carryover person, and then I'll give somebody the role of analysts and they really look at the binder for the procedure you know as pictures with it and other persons like a pipette or and a data recorder
and the other person's a pipette or and they communicate the results back to the water authority. And that really is really jumpstart because I didn't have that for a while you know it was that sort of, you know, should I fight that should you bite that, and man they jumped right in, and they just started going with it and so. So that is really helped those folks and you know it doesn't take a time or two.
They really get going so I would just argue that, you know, it really just gets the students learning faster and really better straight from the get go.
Yeah, I agree I went to a college in which our recitation one of my recitations was using Pogel, but I think the professor didn't understand how to really influence the roles we have rules but they weren't really tightly explained to us or enforce in any way so going through that process and not knowing why we had a role just having a little piece of paper that said reader on it or whatever was didn't didn't sit well with me I loved the Pogel aspect but not the role so when I went into teaching.
I did Pogel for many years without the roles and I knew we knew something was missing but I didn't know it was that because I just thought it was overly simple and maybe baby ish to have roles at first. And I went to a Pogel facilitation track, and the facilitator can I name names Beth Mancini made us be in our roles. And I was like, oh my god, this is revolutionary.
And it was being in the shoes of a student and saying, This is my job for this group and this is how I'm going to be participating. Like Rodney said help my anxiety, help me make sure that I was involved in my group in the right the best capacity I could.
And immediately home was like I had to change everything about what I'm doing with Pogel so I figured out what roles work best for me to make it so it's easier for me to actually enforce them I decided how would I check if they're actually participating in that way and I had like a little check marks and write their kids names down with a check mark sex to them.
I kind of had like laminate their role cards so they had it right in front of them with like a list of these are the duties of your role. And I can't say that it went particularly amazing the first time around. I really had to think about how to entice the students into wanting to do it with like maybe a job listings activity that they talk about in there, or just kind of showing them how you know whatever job they're going to be going into.
And there are people with roles there is a manager where you're going to go they might not call it manager might call it principal in my case. They have their roles and you need to know how to like check your boxes. And so they, the more I worked on listing my students the better it got and next thing you know within a couple of Pogel activities later, the kids were really working so I think the same
thing that I said it gives the students all something else to concentrate on that makes it so they feel more secure in class, and also a little less focus on how hard the chemistry is, I at least can get something done I can at least check off that we really communicated today or we really tried in our problem solving today can feel accomplished, even if there's a small section of the chemistry that was difficult for me today.
And then the students who are not very good communicators. You kind of give them a role like ambassador or like a recorder and have them kind of shadow someone else who's a little more outgoing, and they blossom a little bit better than if you never had any roles.
So, so it sounds like you're kind of tuning what the students do what their role is going to be to sort of what their personality is. Am I right in that or do you do you rotate roles just like new class everybody you know moves one role, you know how
does that work or honestly the beginning of the year it's just whatever right because I don't know the students and I just kind of have to really pay attention I don't think I do a polo activity right away for that reason I try to get to know who my students are.
And then yeah the beginning to make it a little bit more smooth transition. I do kind of tailor right the the outgoing students with the report out or manager position, and the more reluctant students with something that can actually manage that I think they can manage or am I even ask them what do you think for the next next Poggle would make you feel most comfortable. And then like, maybe I have a meeting of people who are analysts last week.
And what what did you do when you're an analyst analyst last week sit over here, people who were reporters What did you do last week that made it go really well to kind of really foster them and then I started really shuffling them after a while it's just like, you should be able to get any role and run with it.
Right, as they get a little bit more familiar Rodney is this. Do you see the same sort of thing at college level or do you do it a little differently. Yeah, I tend to, you know, try to somewhat randomly pick I sometimes you know I thought I can, I used to sort of like maybe try to pick someone you know to be a manager that I thought was really good.
Sometimes I've done that but more recently last year or two, I sort of make it random like I'll say right the manager today is the person with the smallest phone, or you know that person who lives closest to a river, or the furthest from our campus, and to try to make it somewhat random and to move it around to at least pick the manager based randomly and that manager sort of selects, you know, gives them a little bit of autonomy to work through there so.
Yeah, so I do I think a little bit more randomly. In that sense for most of my classes because I have either upper division classes which are smaller. And so I try to give them a little bit more flexibility and then I have somewhat larger classes and so I try not to be over prescriptive in those cases.
Right, right. And I'll just throw out another idea for those who like the, this is what I do on the first day of the POCO classroom is, I will shuffle up a deck of cards and hand them out. All the aces are together, all the twos together all the threes, you know the spades are the managers, the hearts of the recorders you know stuff like that and so. But generally I tried to just rotate the roles around and, you know, what I find is that it's, it's difficult to get students sometimes to buy in.
And, you know, because, like, as Kristen noted some students just, you know, they're not outgoing. I have some students who just are not good at keeping notes as the recorder, you know, and they worry about their own learning, they still feel like I have to get all of this
knowledge, you know, and I need to understand what's going on in class. So, how do you motivate the recalcitrant student you like, you know, do you like that, that word there I'm, I'm big on trying to use big words to the recalcitrant student who doesn't want to adopt a particular role, like the student who just, you know, can't manage anything and just sort of lets the team go.
So, do you have any examples for workarounds, other than, you know, prescribing okay this is the manager of this team because I can't trust the rest of you to do it. So, so I'm looking for help here from from the both of you.
I'll start I, the one the one role that I find more than maybe someone doesn't record well is, at least my classes is the presenter. And you know I either have upper level classes where maybe they, you know, you have a biology major taking my biochemistry and maybe feel like you know they're not confident or in a 60 person class someone wanted to talk out and so I end up even though I like I signed the manager randomly, it seems like a lot of teams.
I find that it's the same presenter, you know, you might have. They may move around and sometimes maybe they even cheat maybe the manager presenter the same person because that person you know is really good at talking they're really confident. And so some days I will start with all right in your teams first I want you to pick the presenter and the presenter has to be someone who hasn't presented in three classes or not much at all.
And then once you get that then you can choose some of the other roles because I really want to hear some different voices here you know instead of just having that one person. And so the that person. Yeah, so that person can really be helped that sort of maybe quiet to maybe not talking or just by speaking out to the class and I think can help and their development.
And then one other time I had something similar was in one of the sort of research teams the lab teams, and I had one student he was a little bit older, and he wasn't so much a domineering kind of guy but he was just really a kind of a pleasant outgoing
sort of really hopeful and he really just want to do a great job and he would. I could just see that he would take over as manager, and I really wanted this other student who was more experience in the lab to sort of be the manager and so I just sort of pulled him aside and said all right, you're a great manager you've already had some experiences leading you know school clubs but this is what I want you to do with your role and you're going to be, you're going to help the manager.
And so I sort of put him in that so in that case I pulled somebody in a side, and that may or may not be possible in a larger class but you know if it's someone who's really stuck in one role maybe there's a way that you know maybe that one on one can happen
in this student he was really open to it so that went to the. So that went well. And then, um, sometimes I'll have the presenter or maybe maybe it's someone who always is the recorder and they don't want to be the presenter I'll have them go to the board maybe I'll say all right, the recorder is going to go to the board today and you know everybody puts up one problem so I've tried to hit up on a few of those.
I also have issues with students who want to always present and other ones that never want to present and at the high school or even middle school level. I think it's okay to give them kind of more sentence starters so that some students won't need it and other students can use them to you might say, all right, if you're having a hard time knowing what you're going to say later.
I'd like you to have this format right today you know for the question number three you can start with these three words in certain blank, and then and then these three words, something like that that would help them feel like they didn't crack the entire thing.
And it just makes it a little bit easier to chunk it out for them so that they feel more comfortable and then they hear other people saying some of those same sentence starters and like oh okay they I think the right sentence starter for this question or whatever it is. I think the best ones are my biggest issue is the people who don't want to speak out loud.
But, like I said, like, Ronnie was saying maybe you wait a couple weeks, and you let the people who like to present do it often enough that and say hey just you know eventually you're going to probably all present.
Maybe take some notes right listen to what these people are saying and make it a safe space for when you know it's going to happen at some point that somebody is I say something kind of wrong, even if they're confident, making a safe space for them to say something wrong and discuss a great ways to give good feedback that's actionable but not me.
And that way when it's time for the collective students who speak, they know it's a okay place to make a mistake and also fall back on the fact that, well if you made that mistake, it's not just you. It's your whole team. You all read on it so it can't be that outlandish of an answer.
Right, right, right. I just jumped in for a second I really like, yeah what sure was saying there at the end about that safe space. And I really noticed this sometimes the teams and they don't want to say an answer and. They really fear that they're going to have something wrong so they're almost frozen. And sometimes you know and sometimes I'll just say you know you really it's all right if you're wrong we don't always have to be right.
And that's why we're doing the teams because you know you're going to be able to see what other people's answers are that we have to compare. And it really I think once students get over that, then you know and especially if they're talking it out and I think it can
really help and especially if the teams tend to be a safe place and if you try to you know establish the roles and those types of things. I think it really can help the students be able to say a wrong answer to have a wrong calculation, and then to be able to fix it later.
Yeah, how many times have scientists been wrong and we teach that for a reason, right, and how many times do scientists collaborate like this is all part of the bigger picture like we're working together just like scientists do we're wrong just like scientists are. And we're, you know, trying, the whole point is that we're trying to learn something so failure is part of the learning. Yeah, I mean absolutely I totally agree. My students are always afraid of being wrong.
And, and they always want to make sure they leave the classroom with all of the answers correct. You guys found that too. And it's like, if you that the whole key there is is review your results after class, come back with questions because you're probably going to get some, or better yet, check in with the rest of your team. You know, either between classes, you know between we meet when we meet next time or at the beginning so it's it's.
The reflection piece is probably one of the harder things for. I'm sure particularly at the high school level but you know you even at the college the students don't come in, you know, reflecting on what they're learning, and I think that, again, working in a team but like you said Chris I think it's a great thing giving them a safe space where they can sort of add something to it by, by picking a role.
You know, and I guess, you know, at the end of this I think the key is, and I'm going to go back to something that Rodney said earlier about, you know, the students come back to us. You know, years later and say you know I really appreciate what you were doing I really like Rodney I like your comment about how the student really appreciated the roles that they were given, you know, and that sort of helped them.
Do you have any other anecdotes that would convince the listener that roles are really important. I could say that until I figured out how to use roles, I don't know. I felt like the Poggle activities were going over like a big light brick. They're getting the point across they're learning some things but it wasn't exciting for the my students,
and then with getting their roles and getting that buy in and those process skills and explaining why we're doing it this way and being more transparent with the students. I'm at the point where if I say if they see the role cards coming out because my role cards are bright like bright red and bright orange. They like cheer, like excited, or they come in the class and they're like we're doing a Poggle today.
We're kind of random is not like every presentation that we're doing Poggle and I'm like actually we are like yeah because they find it more of a healthy challenge. Right. Yeah, I had one student in an organic class and he was one of the engineers and I think it was it was an end of course evaluation my pressure I knew who it was.
But he said you know he said I really organic chemistry is really tough he said but man, and I did it and I do it mostly on Wednesdays and organic chemistry said but every Wednesday he said I knew what was happening. He said we could get through it, and I would really get that knowledge because I was able to talk it out with friends, and that type of thing you know again going through this sort of structured role.
And so I think it you know was able to give him that not every student likes it and some people I know even the semester there, I can sort of tell but some of their comments and the reflectors reports that you know like it's not explained well enough
as if they're not understanding because you know I didn't give a great lecture you know because they have to sort of solve it. But nonetheless I mean, I think working in the in the groups can really be helpful and I think there's a good bit of sort of positive peer
pressure and team behavior that can really result as a part of that because you know they don't necessarily want to be able to give up you know and if maybe if there was unstructured they can maybe one person could set back but perhaps and be lazy maybe let the smart person get it but because they have these roles and they're, they need to make sure that they're sort of working together. And I've often found like the recorder and the presenter.
They oftentimes can be really close because the reporters you know they got to write down the official team answer, and then the presenters got to say it. And, and sometimes that you know that they have to work together because they know the presenter doesn't want to look bad. And so he's asking the recorder and the other members to make sure that he or she has it.
And that's the correct answer. And just the other day in fact I was, I was pushing some people to why they have this answer. And I remember these two guys and the one was the presenter and I've looked over and they is a sort of like two officials nodding each other that he's all right, this is why we think it you know and they were making they were conferring really quickly before they gave their answer and it was the correct answer.
And I, I really, I really think some of that you know the sort of positive peer pressure students aren't being as lazy as they might otherwise you know they wouldn't want if they wouldn't have a role. And then also just the roles, you know, I think really helps more learning take place during a given hour because those hours fly by my students talk about that all the time, you know, we have active learning, but it really helps more things take place learning wise during
the day. Right. Right. Absolutely. Well, you know, I want to thank both of you for taking time to share your experience within the POGLE classroom and how we can use roles, not dinner rolls Wayne, but active, active learning roles and active process skill based roles in in the POGLE classroom. Thanks very much guys really appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you. Back to you, Wayne. Okay, thanks Alex and thanks Kristen and Ronnie for just a great discussion.
As we've said before, in this season, we want this to be the beginning of the discussion so if you're on Facebook if you're a member of the Facebook practitioners group. You can follow hashtag the POGLE podcast, you can do this for any of our episodes, but particularly for this episode. We want you to, to make your comments known about what you do with roles how they've affected your teaching, how you use them in your classroom so we're looking forward to a lot of rich discussion on Facebook.
And adjusting to the POGLE podcast episode three of season three we will be back very soon with episode four. Goodbye everybody.