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...

My SOLO Journey -2 weeks in

This school year is now about 2 weeks old. I've seen my year 10 SOLO guinea pigs for about three lessons apiece now.

A quick recap: I decided to try SOLO with my year 10 classes for a few reasons;

1. The evidence suggests that SOLO can boost achievement and despite what the GOVErnment suggest it does take effort to pass them
2. I have four classes on the same syllabus. 2 HT and 2 FT

The course they're following is OCR Gateway. I am teaching them C1 -Carbon Chemistry.

We began learning about crude oil. I taught the two lessons on the topic and then brought in the SOLO using Tait Coles' (@totallywired77) lesson structure (I tested this on year 7 at the end of last year and it worked well).

When I used SOLO last year it was at the end of a topic and it was an easy framework for the kids to understand and apply to knowledge they already had. In order to set off with SOLO in mind I needed to use Constructive Alignment (CA).
    To be honest this took me a bit of thinking to get my simple brain around. After 7 years of Bloom's I now needed to rewire my thinking and change the progression of the objectives from what I had done to what was needed in SOLO.

An example of the SOLO-ised (SOLO-ified?) objectives is:

(Unistructural) State one use for crude oil
(Multistructural) Give a range of uses for crude oil
(Relational) Explain WHY crude oil can be separated using fractional distillation I needed to stress the explain WHY bit to the students to ensure I got more than a description of fractional distillation
(Extended Abstract) Describe the problems that would be caused by running out of crude oil I found thinking at this level for my objectives quite challenging! Having to go outside the box yet remain relevant.

I'd really appreciate feedback from SOLO practitioners regarding anything in this post but especially comments about the objectives.

Initially I didn't use the SOLO terminology too much, I showed the objectives on a progress arrow and explained that we all needed to be moving to the right (towards EA).

In the third lesson, where SOLO was properly introduced I moved through the stages of using, applying and creating with SOLO. We created a mark scheme to answer the question "How is crude oil made useful?"

We worked through what we'd expect at each level and then set about answering the question. At the moment I only have the results back from the  foundation tier classes. They managed (on the whole) to write a response which was bordering on relational. Generally in the form of a list of facts about uses of crude oil with perhaps one link of concepts (eg "Petrol contains lots of energy, that is why it makes a good fuel").

It has been interesting to see what the results were and it is helping to inform my teaching for the next sections. I really need to sharpen up my own practice in some areas to help the students sharpen up their own.
I need to make sure there is sufficient material/scope for them to make links in class.

The experiment continues. 

Going SOLO from the start

Well, its a new term. Time for some new tricks.

At the end of last term I found out about SOLO and tried it out on an unsuspecting year 7 class. It seemed to go well. The AST who filmed it agreed that there was some good stuff in that lesson.

Everything I've read about this particular taxonomy suggests it is a good aid to improving learning. I have decided to try to embed it from the beginning.

But how does one go about reinventing ones own personal wheel?
I'm fortunate this year that I have four classes in year 10 all following the same syllabus. Two classes probably aiming for higher tier papers and the other two most likely foundation.
   This means I get to try something, tweak it and try it again. I'll try to record my observations and reflections here as I go along.

Starting out:

My year 10 classes will be starting with module C1 from OCR Gateway 2011 spec. C1 is the organic chemistry unit. The first sub-topic is products from oil.

Over the summer I bought SOLO taxonomy book 1 by Pam Hook and read it cover to cover. My start point is Constructive Alignment of the learning objectives. The learning objectives in the lessons have had their learning verbs matched against the SOLO levels in the book.
  SOLO will not be mentioned explicitly from the start, I think I'll bring it into lesson 3 so I can use it as AFL when we have some content covered. I'll probably use a similar structure to the lesson I tried last term (A heavily copied lesson structure from Tait Coles @Totallywired77).

I'll add details of the lesson I shall begin with after I've tried it out, then I can record how it went.

I went SOLO (How Low?)

Here I am, fresh back from 7A2's introduction to SOLO.
My initial feeling is that it went well. The discussion between the kids was right on topic, deciding which level something was on an exemplar.

I used Tait Coles' structure with a few tweaks (and shoe-horned in as many cool web apps as I could, just to try them out as it was being filmed).

By the end the students could create a piece of work that was relational level and provide feedback for each other as to what would make it extended abstract.

When I've reviewed the video I'll have a much better idea of how it went but for now, I'm very happy with my end of term experiment.

Plus points:

• On task kids
• Easy to understand structure
• Good standard of work and of discussion

To improve:

• Because of the shoe-horning tech. they didn't have as much time towards the end as I'd have liked. I had intended to use the triptico hexagons again to refresh the links between concepts

Update: I saw some of the girls from 7A2 in the yard at lunch time and asked what they thought of the lesson..
"As it was almost our last lesson this year I was disappointed you made us do work"
"I thought it was weird because you were talking about deep all the time"

I asked did you understand what you were doing
"Yes"
"Yes, most of the time"

SOLO

I've read about it. If you're a blog-reading teacher then you've probably read about it too.

I'm going to try it.

Top set year 7. End of term. AST filming it. What could go wrong?

Topic is space.
I'll introduce the idea of SOLO then we'll use it in the manner outlined by Tait Coles on his blog.
Including the hexagons app by Triptico.

Hopefully I'll have something positive to report.

Watch this space...