The Light That Falls Through the Cracks - Solo Stations in English For some time now I’ve been working with Solo Taxonomy and enjoying the ways that pupils are able to be in charge of their own learning and progress. Another added advantage is that they are able to articulate that progress to any observer… all key ingredients of an Outstanding lesson. We’ve just reached the end of our first unit in GCSE English, non-fiction, and I wanted to recap on what we’d learned but without doing a dull revision lesson. So taking a leaf out of several other Solo Taxonomists’ books, I decided to try a derivative of Solo Stations for the first time. I was particularly keen that the pupils reviewed their knowledge of persuasive techniques, language features and presentational devices so for the stimulus material I downloaded several property brochures from www.rightmove.co.uk (I went for high-end property in West Sussex as that had some great examples of the hyperbole of Estate Agents with some pretty pictures!) This is the PowerPoint with each Solo Station on:
arti_choke: @Gripweed1 SOLO in programming... geoperry | Using SOLO as a framework for learning Is SOLO a waste of time? Stop blaming your lack of experimentation, risk and innovation on your lack of time.Hywel Roberts – Oops! Helping Children Learn Accidentally It was pointed out to me recently that I can afford to expend my energies on such fripperies as the SOLO taxonomy and group work because I teach a subject which is rich in curriculum time. Clearly there’s some truth in this: English does get more time than, say, French or RE. But consider this: what are the learning outcomes we’re hoping to see? This is not an attack on ‘mere facts’. Regular readers will know that I’ve devoted a fair amount of time to investigating how SOLO can be used to help students learn more efficiently. Too often I hear that it’s inefficient to spend lesson time on anything other than direct instruction. And just for the record, I’ve got nothing against direct instruction as a powerful part of teaching armoury; I use it often and there are some important advantages to using it: All true, but what are the disadvantages?
SOLO Taxonomy | Wilmslow High School's 'Lookout for Learning' The Structure of Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy is a model of learning that: “Provides a simple and robust way of describing how learning outcomes grow in complexity from surface to deep understanding” Biggs and Collin (1982)Is similar to Bloom’s taxonomy but it has one major advantage: SOLO taxonomy provides a user friendly, common language of learning that enables the student and teacher to explicitly understand the learning process. The 5 levels of understanding are: Pre-structural – The task is not attacked appropriately; the student hasn’t really understood the point and uses too simple a way of going about it.Uni-structural – The student’s response only focuses on one relevant aspect.Multi-structural – The student’s response focuses on several relevant aspects but they are treated independently and additively. Assessment of this level is primarily quantitative.Relational – The different aspects have become integrated into a coherent whole. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Like this:
@Westylish's Blog: Making My Solo Taxonomy Debut Two weeks ago I started to use solo taxonomy for the first time. I had read several posts about the taxonomy on Twitter and felt it could work well with GCSE history source analysis. I liked the way that students could build up their answers working through the different levels of the mark scheme. Below is a video blog recording my thoughts: Since making this video I have been observed using solo taxonomy in this way and the following aspects of solo taxonomy contributed to a successful lesson in that instance.By its nature it is student led.
Going SOLO: An introduction to the taxonomy everyone’s talking about This article originally appeared in Innovate My School's September 2012 digital magazine. The Structure of Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy aims to show pupils how to develop sophisticated responses to questions by getting them to examine their thought-process as their understanding of a topic improves. I began using SOLO in 2011, and it is now integral to my teaching. SOLO defines five stages of understanding for any topic: prestructural, unistructural, multistructural, relational and extended abstract. The first three involve gathering relevant information. The other two are about using that information: linking facts and findings, questioning existing ideas about the topic, and forming new theories. All well and good. SOLO LEVEL: PRESTRUCTURAL (the pupil has missed the point) PUPIL RESPONSE:I think Johnny Depp is a Shakespeare character because we watched a film featuring both of them. TO MOVE ON:The pupil must begin to gather basic information on the topic. Implementing SOLO
Going SOLO for the First Time …… | Devon Geography After following the correspondence on Twitter between the likes of @JohnSayers, @EmmaAbuDabi, @aknill and others, I became interested in the idea of using SOLO taxonomy in my Geography lessons. So, as I began the process of planning my lessons for the second half of the Autumn Term, I decided to take the plunge and give it a try with a year nine group who were about to embark on a unit of work on earthquakes. I was particularly attracted to SOLO as a means of supporting differentiation in my lessons, and I also wanted to encourage conversations about learning in the classroom. SOLO also seemed to provide an easily understandable structure to measure progression through individual lessons and the unit of work as a whole. If you want to find out more about the SOLO taxonomy before reading this blog, I have attached some summary notes below. There is also a link here to a collection of resources on ‘Scoop It’: SOLO Taxonomy Introduction
SOLO Hexagon Generator This HookED app populates a SOLO Hexagon Template. Brainstorm content ideas and enter them in the fields below. Click “Generate Document” to populate the template. Print the template and cut out the hexagons. Ask students to arrange the hexagons in sequences and clusters, justifying and annotating any connections made. Unistructural learning outcome-student identifies one hexagonMultistructural learning outcome-student identifies several hexagonsRelational learning outcome-student connects hexagons and explains the connections with annotations.Extended abstract learning outcome– student tessellates (clusters) hexagons adding annotations to make generalisations about a vertex (intersection point).
SOLO taxonomy « David Didau: The Learning Spy A few weeks ago I rather rashly offered to present on SOLO taxonomy to the North Somerset Aspire network. As always with this sort of foolishness it’s made me consider my understanding of the subject in a lot more depth. Before the Summer I’d never even heard of it. But since then the whole world (or at least the very narrow teaching geek world I inhabit) has exploded with SOLO fever. Tait Coles and Darren Mead have done their best to help me understand some of the complexities but it’s taken Lisa Jane Ashes, another English teacher, to get me over the last few humps. So, after cannibalising Tait’s Prezi, I began putting together a presentation which said what I thought needed saying. And here are the bits and bobs to go with the presentation : 'Grown up' statements on AfL to classify And the SOLO levels sheet to help prompt the AfL card sort: And the 'meta' hexagons (which are really just hexagons about SOLO and probably a bit of a disappointment) Like this: Like Loading...
Learner Evolution ~ Chris Harte: Brains on the SOLO table So here starteth the mystery... Tait Coles and I were conversing about the SOLO taxonomy on twitter when I sent him an article by David Leat and Adam Nichols on the use of mysteries to concretely demonstrate learner understanding. Now Tait and I both have a passion for student learning and an equal passion for our own learning so the possibility of collaborating on a blog post was too great to miss out. SOLO Mysteries There is a powerful renaissance in the use of the SOLO Taxonomy, at least amongst those teachers who publicly discuss their work through blogs and social media, but SOLO is nothing new. In the current work of Pam Hook, Darren Mead et al, the focus is moving beyond SOLO as a teacher assessment tool and a move to develop its use as learner tool; a roadmap of learning for learners to support their progression in depth of understanding. This video shows a group of Y11 Australian (i.e. Prestructural and the Mystery “What the hell do you want us to do?”
SimBadd64: My newly completed Accelerated... Mr_Betts: AS/A2 Independent Learning... How to introduce SOLO Taxonomy Introducing a school community to SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs and Collis 1982) is a little like squeezing yourself into a Captain Kirk onesie and imagining yourself standing on the deck of the Enterprise. “Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. You have to introduce a complex idea in a few sentences – the experience must be simple enough to be remembered and yet quirky enough to capture people’s attention. When introducing SOLO you have to emphasise its robust simplicity – it is after all simply a way of classifying or categorising learning outcomes. I like to do this by referring to Professor John Biggs research on constructive alignment and then to back this up with reference to the work of Professor Carol Dweck and Professor John Hattie My current favourite is a collaborative activity where participants work together using SOLO Hexagons.