The part about POGILS that I find most useful is that instead of relying on our teacher to teach us, we learn together as a group and end up teaching ourselves. This helps us to work out our own problems and develops our problem solving skills as well as forces us to interact with our group mates to find the answers. The one thing I do not find useful is the random groups because I truly think people are less likely to work together if they are not friends or don't really know the other people in their group.
One thing I would do to improve these lessons is have different groups work on a portion of the packet together and then as a whole class have each different group teach the other groups what they learned. I think this would bring the class back together and having students teach everyone may make the topics clearer.
I like the jigsaw idea (that's the fancy teacher term for what you suggested) and it's probably what we'll incorporate next.
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