Yeah, I
admit it: that was a catchy title to grab your attention! This is about my views on SOLO Taxonomy, my new
role at Rolleston College Horoeka Haemata, and what I hope to learn from this
role. At the end
of last year, I was appointed to a role supporting the implementation of SOLO
Taxonomy into the teaching and learning in the College.
WHAT IS SOLO TAXONOMY?
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| A SOLO HOTMap (graphic organiser). To get full access to these, contact Pam Hook |
At my last
school, I was very fortunate to have been exposed to SOLO Taxonomy from Day
One. Pam led Professional Learning during a Teacher-Only Day, and provided
ongoing support. I was impressed with the common language (much like any other taxonomy that
I had been exposed to beforehand) and the graphic organisers for helping
students get started – you do need to sign up with Pam to get access to these. I
thought the symbols were a bit abstract at first, but I now “get”
them. I was overwhelmed by the rubrics, but saw the huge value in helping students be
explicitly aware of what was required from them to have deeper knowledge and/or
understanding.
MY INTRODUCTION
TO SOLO TAXONOMY
As the “new kid on the block”, I was more than happy to adopt SOLO Taxonomy. This was what the school saw value in and I had applied for the job because I had the utmost respect for this school. Pam had made it very clear that you didn’t need to be an expert to try using it. She recommended starting something eay, like using SOLO verbs in our lesson Specific Learning Outcomes, first. As I was already in the habit of writing these on the board at the start of every lesson, this was a natural place to start.
I was also
a strong believer in providing students with graphic organisers to help them
get started with work, and to offer some guidance for how “deeply” they should
aim to take the task. Therefore, I took it a step further than what Pam
suggested and started using the graphic organisers as well. That meant I had,
by default, created a requirement to give feedback in terms of the SOLO
Taxonomy. The symbols and terms (prestructural, unistructural etc.) had to be
adopted and visible in my classroom.
Communication
with students and parents was needed to explain what these meant. I nailed the
first part, but failed in the second. The school did a very good job at
providing information for parents, so I presumed I just had to report progress
in terms of SOLO. Not quite. More explicit explanation from me, the classroom
teacher, was needed. The classroom time I invested into teaching the students
about what SOLO meant for them and their learning did need to be replicated for
their parents. I fell short on that front.
The next
time Pam visited our school, I was asked to go to the TV Studio to be filmed talking about
SOLO in my practice and in my specialist subject, Science. It was still early
days for me, but a lot of this still holds true:
One of the
key things I found with implementing SOLO Taxonomy was that it was being used
across multiple Learning Areas, particularly Science, Mathematics, Social
Sciences and Health/Physical Education. At Rolleston College Horoeka Haemata,
this needs to be a consideration. However, as our teaching and learning is, by
its very nature, going to be multi-discipline, this should not be difficult to
implement, monitor and maintain.
SOLO TAXONOMY IN MY TEACHING, LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT
In 2011, our Science Department had started to move from
SOLO use only in class and homework tasks to being the way we would report student progress and achievement. We
redesigned our assessments to include SOLO verbs, graphic organisers to help
students plan and start their answers, and rubrics for marking and providing
feedback for “next steps”.
By 2012, our Year 9 and 10 exams had strong SOLO elements in
them, which correlated well with the work done in classrooms, and allowed
students to express their thinking better. We kept things like multiple-choice,
short answer and graphing in our tests and exams, as these could explicitly assess
content knowledge and critical scientific skills. With the advantage of
hindsight, I feel that we undervalued the SOLO-centred tasks, giving more relative
weighting to the content knowledge in the exams. If I could do that again, I
would not change the format of the tests and exams, but would place a lot more value
on the tasks assessed using SOLO Taxonomy.
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| A Visual Rubric SOURCE: http://pamhook.com/ |
One of the best things about the work in our department in
2012 was the use of visual rubrics. They made it much easier to make judgments about student work and
provide quick feedback for the students’ “next steps”. As a department, we also
put together more detail rubrics for marking. These were very similar to what
we see NZQA produce for marking NCEA assessments. Students could be given
either (or both) of these rubrics to help them understand the level of thinking
they had communicated, and to see what would be needed to show deeper thinking
in the future. I do not think I used the visual rubrics nearly as often as I
should have, and will look into using them more in feedback and learning
discussions in the future.
By 2013, SOLO Taxonomy was being used by me in all of my
classes, not just in Years 9 and 10. I was so fluent in the use of SOLO with
Years 9 and 10 that I wrote a reflection
on why it worked so well for me and for my students. In Years 11-13, students
were more interested in the NCEA Achievement grades. Therefore, SOLO was used
for learning and feedback related to specific tasks, while the NCEA grades were
used as judgments for assessed work, such as past exam questions or practice
internal assessments. Most homework tasks were the latter, while most in-class
tasks were the former.
2013 was the year that I was introduced to SOLO Hexagons. I
saw these as a vehicle for making the learning more student-centred. I had
already tried to make the learning more student-centred with my senior Chemistry classes in2013, with mixed
success. It was an engaging way for students to learn and gave them
ownership. It lacked a way to show the relationship between concepts. I felt that hexagons might be a way for students to
visually and explicitly create those links. In 2014, I tried again, this time with hexagons in my kete. I do not think we
fully exploited the potential of using the hexagons, but it was a start. I had a few ideas after reflecting on this second attempt.
In 2015 and 2016, some of those ideas had really come to fruition,
particularly in Year 12 and Year 13 Organic Chemistry. We also used SOLO-driven
tasks for the learning of Spectroscopy, and Atomic Structure and Periodicity.
However, time pressures did limit the amount we could actually explore the
concepts in class. Many of the gamification ideas were left with the students
to take or leave. They proved useful revision tools in class. The “Hexagon
Challenges” were something we only had time for once or twice within the unit.
That was a shame, as I am interested to see whether this reinforcement would
have a positive influence on the students making links between the key concepts.
COLLABORATIVELY SOLO
I am excited about my role in implementing SOLO at Rolleston
College Horoeka Haemata in 2017. There are a few elements that really “float my
boat” about this opportunity:
- Cross-Curricular use of SOLO
- Supporting other staff
- “Leading from behind”
- Reflection
The very nature of how learning is structured at Rolleston
College Horoeka Haemata means that SOLO will be utilised across different
Learning Areas. I envisage that we will need to find and/or develop tasks,
rubrics etc. that measure student success in dispositions that transition
different Learning Areas. Conversely, I expect that there will need to be
success criteria specific to each Learning Area within each topic, or even
within each task.
I see this as an excellent opportunity for me to learn about
other learning areas while supporting other teachers’ needs in developing
success criteria, tasks, rubrics etc. What will be measured? How will it be
measured? How will this be reported? Each Learning Area has its only
peculiarities. Which ones are critical in the success criteria for each task?
I see my role as one of supporting other staff to upskill in
SOLO, while also looking at how SOLO might satisfy their needs or complement
their current practice. From our time together in Term Four 2016, it is clear
that we are not only a very collegial group, but we are well on the road to
being a strongly collaborative team. This has made me think seriously about how
I want to “lead” the implementation of SOLO in the College.
So often, when asked to “lead” something in the past, I have
looked to drive it as an “expert”, taking others on a predetermined journey.
From this point forwards, I found it easier to support individual needs.
Interestingly, it was often how I taught my students as well… I expect that
things will be much different in this role at Rolleston College Horoeka
Haemata. The idea of “Leading from Behind” is one that I really want to experience,
and I hope that this role will be more in this mould.
At Rolleston College Horoeka Haemata, Learning Leaders are currently
synonymous to Heads of Department at most other New Zealand Secondary Schools.
Serving and supporting their needs is critical in leading the implementation of
SOLO Taxonomy, in my opinion. Rather than directing Learning Leaders in how
they should be incorporating and implementing SOLO, I expect that I will be
doing a lot of listening and asking many questions. How can SOLO help with that problem? How can SOLO help measure that? How
can SOLO support student learning in this? I wonder if I will need to be the
point of contact for parents who need clarification of “this SOLO thing”. If I
do a good job, I expect that this would not be the case in the future, though…
In my reflections of using SOLO Taxonomy in the past, one of
the big questions was why it lost traction in the NCEA years with so many
colleagues and with students. Was it just a change in focus, or was it less
relevant beyond Year 10? Did we SOLO-assess too often? Were the correlations between
SOLO (for learning) and NCEA grades (for assessment) not made clear enough?
If, despite a staff that are “sold” on SOLO, we see a similar
lack of traction at my current school, it will be critical to ask why. I see
this reflection (and the potential for teaching inquiry around this) to be the
bases of this role if it continues beyond 2017, along with continued support
for colleagues, particularly new staff. For now, though, let’s get started in
leading the implementation of SOLO in a highly collaborative workplace. I am
looking forward to a role in which I will learn a lot, while also getting to
apply my experience to new challenges and opportunities.
