I have just finished reading David Didau’s recent posts on ‘progress’ versus ‘learning’ – The Problem With Progress – which you can find here, here and here. Taking as his starting point @kevbartle’s brilliant post on progress, @learningspy asks what is more important? Learning or progress? He goes on to explore various ways in which we can improve learning – even if comes at the expense of our ability to ‘demonstrate progress.’ It is a timely corrective and, as I read, I could almost feel the seismic vibrations of pedagogical plates shifting.

It is in the third of these posts that David refers to SOLO:

“I’m going a bit off-script here, but I’ve become increasingly convinced that SOLO taxonomy is most effectively used to plan learning outcomes; many of the tricks and gimmicks involved in explicitly teaching students about the taxonomy should, perhaps, be bypassed to concentrate on expanding students’ domain knowledge.

There, I’ve said it. I find SOLO incredibly valuable in helping me plan and organise a curriculum, but much of the time I was previously putting into teaching the taxonomy itself was based on the flawed belief that it would help students demonstrate progress. And make no mistake, it is great for getting students to demonstrate progress; but of what? If I accept that learning takes time and needs to build on a firm foundation of knowledge then there really isn’t any value in prompting students to show they’re able to more from multi-structural to extended abstract in a single lesson. All this demonstrates is the progress they’ve made in their ability to perform a particular task at a particular time. True extended abstract thinking develops over time. This is of course something we should plan for and it seems a sensible use of time within a spaced, interleaved curriculum that we should plan to take students on a journey from knowing very little, to knowing a lot, to being able to apply this knowledge in new and interesting ways.”

Cards on table: I love SOLO taxonomy. I was immediately drawn to its cool hieroglyphics and I found its simplicity refreshing. It had none of the confusing overlaps of Bloom’s taxonomy (identify appears in knowledge, comprehension & analysis) and it seemed to me, right from the get go, that this was potentially a very powerful teaching tool.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t have my concerns: I worried that it could turn out to be an artificial and ultimately unnecessary overlay on learning; I worried that what I took for beautiful simplicity was actually crude and formulaic; I worried that it would rule out other approaches to learning and teaching and I worried that it would not leave room for creativity. But once I tried it out in the classroom, I discovered that all of these anxieties had been misplaced. My pupils readily embraced it and it worked like a dream. However, as it was through the Learning Spy blog that I first discovered SOLO, alarm bells inevitably rang when I read about his new thinking on the subject.

Now, I recognize that David Didau has not consigned SOLO to the pedagogical scrap heap. He is simply questioning the value of devoting lesson time to ‘teaching’ the taxonomy with a view to using it to demonstrate ‘progress’. Indeed, he affirms the value of SOLO as a template for planning. However, my anxiety is that if we dispense with teaching the pupils the structures and terminology of SOLO, we reduce the power of this pedagogy and do our pupils a real disservice.

The ability to make progress visible is only the most superficial of the benefits that SOLO brings with it. The real power of this taxonomy lies in its ability to empower pupils in their own learning and to foster greater independence and resilience. There is something incredibly powerful in what I have come to think off as the forward momentum that is a defining aspect of this taxonomy and that is contained in the implied progress from prestructural to extended abstract. This is another of the key differences between Bloom’s and SOLO – the idea of progression between the levels is in inherent in SOLO and pupils grasp this quickly.

In my experience it takes next to no time to introduce SOLO. Following a simple card sorting exercise (see @totallywired77’s blog), the structures are embedded by means of their practical application in real time lessons. The pedagogy is never the point of the lesson – it is simply a scaffold for learning and it surprising how quickly they take ownership of the terminology. Once the penny has dropped and they understand the progression between the levels they actively want to move between the levels. I knew this to be true the first time a child approached me in class and said that he was working at a relational level, but needed additional support in moving to extended abstract (honest, it happened).

Having said all that, David Didau is undoubtedly right: the progress which pupils enact in moving from prestructural to extended abstract is not necessarily ‘real’ or lasting. Indeed, it is the irresistable forward momentum of SOLO that can lead teachers to devise lessons in which pupils cover all of the stages from prestructural to extended abstract in just an hour.The trick is to slow down and to resist the temptation to rush pupils through the levels. As with any other lesson in which peer and self is key, it is essential to ‘quality assure’ pupils’ assessments. Just because you’ve asked your pupils to stick their personalised post-it notes on the board under the SOLO symbol which reflects their current understanding, it does not follow that their assessment is reliable. An easy way to address this is to ask for a show of hands for each level and to challenge individuals to articulate why they think they are at such and such a level and then to ask pupils to reflect on this and reconsider where they would place themselves.

SOLO has given my pupils a sense of purpose and an independence in their learning which was often lacking. I don’t use it all the time – only when its appropriate. I am also aware that I have a great deal left to learn: I am yet to get to grips with SOLO as a tool for improving writing, but as a structure to support pupils in the close analysis of texts and the development of a personal response I have found it invaluable. This improvement in performance may, as @huntingenglish pointed out, be an example of the Hawthorne effect – the teacher’s enthusiasm for the new plus the pupils’ sense of being selected for something ‘special’ equals improvement in outcomes – but as time has gone on and SOLO has become a mainstay of my classroom repertoire, I’m inclined to think not. I have come to believe that there is something inherently empowering in this learning and teaching taxonomy. SOLO taxonomy does not get in the way of learning. It enhances learning by empowering pupils to take responsibility for their own progression.

So, here are just a few reasons to give SOLO a whirl: it is a brilliant way for teachers to plan lesson outcomes which moves from the superficial (quantitative) to the deep (qualitative); progress from one SOLO level to the next is implicit. Pupils get caught up in its forward momentum; it provides a common language for learning which helps teachers and students understand progress; it is fantastic for differentiation. See @lisajaneashes blog on how pupils can self-differentiate using SOLO;SOLO verbs and connectives make it very easy to integrate literacy objectives seamlessly into planning;it makes group work more purposeful, particular when work is focused on HOT maps;it is brilliant for peer and self assessment and feedback and feedforward.

Last but not least, members of the Maths department are quite put out when they see English teachers running around with armfuls of hexagons and this can only be a good thing!

Say what you like about Sir Michael Wilshaw, it is hard to dispute that he has done the teaching profession a favour by addressing certain ‘myths’ about what ‘Good’/ ‘Outstanding’ teaching looks like. These ‘myths’ are summarised succinctly by the consistently ‘outstanding’ @murphiegirl in her post, Ofted for Humans: “lessons need to be fast-paced; lessons need to be packed with a range of activities; lesson plans need to be massively detailed; you should not deviate from your plan; learning needs to be reviewed every 10 minutes; the lesson has to be perfect.” Also consigned to the Ofsted dustbin are the ideas that lessons should be divided into three parts with a starter, development and a plenary and that objectives should be displayed on the board. A wise tweacher, whose name eludes me, tweeted that ‘the standardisation of teaching is the death of teaching.’ Finally, it seems that the powers that be have caught up! Wilshaw’s remarks are liberating. He has freed us to reclaim our classrooms and to focus on what works. This is great news for teachers.

Recently, he has gone even further, commenting in the Telegraph that inspectors “don’t see enough extended reading and extended writing” in English lessons. This has prompted a good deal of debate in our department staffroom: it’s all very well saying that inspectors want to see extended writing, but how would this work in practice? How would it be possible to evidence impact and progress in a lesson focused on extended writing?

After much head scratching in my department, we decided that the answer lay in peer assessment and careful redrafting. Not only would this help to embed the culture of craftsmanship written about so eloquently by @huntingenglish, but it would also enable us to nurture our pupils’ intellectual resilience through structured peer scrutiny (see Zoe Elder’s inspirational Full on Learning for Further details). 

Anyway, the upshot of all my musing is that I thought I’d share the best tool that I have come across for self and peer review – The Evaluation Target Board. The Target Board was created by Thinkwelland I was introduced to it through the Connections for Learning programme at my school. However, I’ve added my own ‘twist’– the magic is in the plenary! This is how I have made use of it to help Y8 pupils improve their persuasive writing.

This sequence of activities is based on the TV programme Room 101. Celebrity guests are asked to make an argument for ‘things’ (in the loosest sense of that word) to be consigned for all eternity to Room 101 (see Orwell’s 1984 for literary context). If you are unfamiliar with the format of the show, here is a clip.

I begin by asking pupils what they consider the most essential elements of powerful persuasive writing. Pupils work in pairs to ‘brainstorm’ their ideas. They feedback and I collect their ideas on the board. Depending on the group and the ability level, we might end up with something like this: emotive language; rhetorical questions; facts & opinions, etc…

Next, I ask them to rank the following examples ‘what I wrote’. Apologies to cat lovers.

 Example 1: I really don’t like cats. They are very upsetting. Basically, they act like they own the place. They’ve got horrible rough tongues and they are always licking their sticky bits. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they’ve got really smelly poo. I think that they should go into Room 101.

Example 2: I can’t stand cats. We call them pets, but basically they couldn’t care less about us. They just parade around the house, acting like they own the place. What’s the point in having a pet that thinks it’s superior to you?

As if that wasn’t bad enough, they spend half of the day sleeping and the other half licking their sticky bits with their horrible, rough tongues. What have they got to be superior about?

And just when you thought they couldn’t get any more disgusting, they leave a dead thing in your shoe as a ‘present.’

Not only that but they have the stinkiest poo in the whole world.

Go on – stick the moggy in Room 101. You know you want to.

Example 3: If I could have one wish – just one – it would be that every cat in the whole world would spontaneously combust at my command. Kitty apocalypse! And, boy, have those furry little blighters got it coming!

It’s not just the way that they parade around the house acting as if they own the place; it’s not the way they spend half the day snoring on some sun-lit cushion and the other half licking their sticky bits, while you’re trying to eat your dinner – it’s not even the way they wake you up in the morning by clawing your chest and trying to curl up on your face. No, it’s the fact that they think that they are better than you.

And just when you thought that they couldn’t be any more revolting they leave a surprise in your shoe. Some twitching, half dead/ half alive rodent or bird – its still warm guts squelching in your sock.

Trust me – I won’t rest until the last of the feline species is crammed, spitting and yowling into Room 101!

Following the rank order exercise, pupils share the features of the text which they have identified as most effective. Following feedback, I ask them if they want to change their list of criteria. It is at this point that I give out the target boards and ask the pupils to record their effective writing criteria (in no particular order) against the bullet points. The target board that I used on this ocassion had five bullet points and therefore required five criteria, but you can vary the number of bullet points for purposes of differentiation.  

By this stage, the class have engaged in paired and grouped work and they should all have demonstrated progress . You can make this progress ‘visible’ by asking pupils to work on mini-white boards and to display their criteria before and after the ranking exercise.

The next phase involves the pupils working individually, planning and writing their Room 101 speech. If they are stuck, I suggest ‘Facebook’, ‘Karaoke’ and ‘Justin Bieber’ as deserving candidates.

It is at this point that the target boards come into their own. All of the pupils swap their work and use their target boards to peer review the work that they have been given. If criterion number 1 is ‘a strong opening’ and the piece they are marking has the strongest opening they can imagine, they write number 1 in the bull’s eye. If the opening is weak, number 1 is written in one of the outer concentric circles or off the board altogether. They then repeat this procedure with each of the criteria. A perfect piece of work would have all of the numbers in the bull’s eye.

 

 

Pupils then have to redraft at least the first three paragraphs of their peers’ work, using the criteria and trying to ‘improve’ the writing in accordance with the criteria, so that they can justify moving all of the numbers into the centre of the target. In the plenary, pupils read out before and after versions and explain how they improved it, using the criteria. I have found that there is immense power in asking the pupils to articulate how they have improved the work. It delivers quality metacognition.

Finally, because pupils have worked in pairs/ groups and selected only a limited number of criteria, there will be variation in the criteria that pupils have used to assess and improve their peers’ work. I ‘blow up’ the work to A3 size and create a gallery in the classroom, displaying the ‘improved’ writing alongside the target board and criteria. Pupils wander around the room, reading the work and I ask them to stop at the piece of work which they feel is most effective. I take note of where most of the pupils have gathered and ask them to explain why they have chosen that piece of work. This opens up a space for a discussion about the most essential criteria for persuasive writing.

The target boards are incredibly versatile. You can suppy your own criteria or the pupils can generate them from exemplar matrerial (as above) or from A Level or GCSE mark schemes. I have used them to great effect across all key stages.

Have fun!

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