SOLO continues

SOLO is now three weeks old with my classroom. This is a short update on where I've got to.


Personal development:
Initially I found that setting 'constructively aligned' lesson objectives was quite a challenge. Too many PD sessions on Bloom's perhaps!
I'm getting the hang of CA objectives now and displaying them in the form of a SOLO progress arrow so the students can clearly see the learning journey (hmm, jargony).
I am trying to make my lessons more constructivist as that to me seems to be a good fit with SOLO and 'bigger picture thinking' (urk, even more jargon).

Student development:
I've never enjoyed marking books. I wonder now if its because they had the 'wrong' content. With my SOLO classes (four year 10 sets) I am enjoying the marking (Nurse! there's another one loose!) because I can see clearly that the students are making progress.
SOLO really does seem to make a straightforward scaffold for the students to see where they are and what they need to do to improve.
Some of the students still need some help with converting a list of descriptive facts (multistructural) into a flowing, logical explanation (relational).
To support this I have gained a poster on 'connectives' from the English department so I can highlight a range of ways to link concepts together.
-Sometimes its as simple as a few 'becauses' here and there!


I've had a set of 140ish laminated hexagons made by the repro technician and I'm beginning to deploy these more frequently. The students can arrange them but again the converting visual links into flowing prose is a stumbling block.

Today was the first in the series of regular book monitoring visits from the departmental hierarchy. No one else in my school uses SOLO so my books were met with "Why do you have to be the rebel!?" I explained the principle of SOLO to my colleague who I feel was deliberately being confused.
Our book marking policy is quite complicated. It involves an A5 sheet (every two or three weeks) which has Levelled outcomes (blooms/NC levels/GCSE grades) which we tick off, a box for the student to self assess, an AFL box for us and a literacy target. -their work on each page is also marked for subject accuracy and the full works literacy SPaG too.
I'm using the NC/GCSE for the summative assessment in the appropriate boxes and SOLO for the AFL. I'll doubtless have to explain it to the HoD to ensure it meets our quality standards but I think using SOLO in this way makes it clear to the students where they stand.


The experiment continues...