Solo Taxonomy Assessing the Quality of Learning

I have been getting increasingly excited and frustrated with the whole idea of Solo's taxonomy of learning. Like all tools before I use it with my students I need to get my head around it. This process has been difficult as despite never hearing about it! There are lots of really amazing teachers using this with students of all ages, but mainly in New Zealand. So, I have spent an ages reading and thinking about how to use this.

Details of the Grid is available here http://tinyurl.com/l2hhxc

the following sources have been the most inspiring



http://hooked-on-thinking.com/ follow on twitter http://twitter.com/hooked_on_think


http://www.youtube.com/user/Chokearti#play/uploads/6/N63TXAHDgkE. The young students are amazing at describing its use


http://www.slideshare.net/jocelynam/solo-taxonomy


But the most useful thing I've done is trialled it in my lessons, firstly as a self assessment tool and then as a structure to base conversations about the quality of the student work. Both times I have shared what I was doing and asked for feedback. My students have responded in spades, some obviously finding even my crudest attempts useful.





This piece of student work was marked together discussing where on the taxonomy she thought she was. It uses the original language which I have changed, but will probably change back! You can see I am still going back and forth on this one. I have added a couple of extra levels to act as stepping stones. I will find out if they are need.

So my plan is to use the wall display to help permeate as many aspects of my teaching as I can, I will design assessment scheme for specific pieces of work based around this, use it as a self assessment tool, try to correlate it with the National Curriculum levels, refer to it in my feedback to students both verbally and written and I will also with students display exemplar pieces of work at each level. I think this tool with a purpose has legs. Now, I just have to go and use it!

Some Teacher Benefits.

The Purpose of a "purpose" is that it will lead you some where, something must change, something must improve. So, if you don't set an agenda, how do you and more importantly, your students know what they trying to get better at. This is also true for teachers to develop their own skills and knowledge. So, part of the reason I want to establish pedagogical purposes in my lessons is entirely selfish. Geoff Petty in Evidence Based Learning summarises these teacher benefits succinctly as..

A. If you understand why a teaching strategy works well.

B. We can then adapt the strategy if we know why it works

C. If we understand the general principles we can use these to evaluate our own teaching methods and to design new ones.

My priorities for my students in the last three weeks of term have been:-



1. Appropraite use of IT in lessons, tail and dog stories
2. Increase independance and decision making
3. Increase the amount of higher order thinking.

4. Developing a specific Science thinking skills.



These are based pretty much on gut feeling and several formal reflections about my teaching, my students learning and the curriculum that I am teaching too. (Which can be seen above in an enquiry cycle.) Some of these ideas I have already blogged about. So what benefits will I get by challenging my students to these targets? I will scrutinise the first two to highlight how and why I am attempting to do this.


1. Appropriate use of IT.
This big irritant to me, I too often find that students will spend hours being totally distracted by the use of IT in my lessons. I am not talking misuse of the IT, like gaming, as this is less irritating, as it is a behaviour issue and I will deal with it as I would any behaviour issue. The two biggest worries I have are firstly, that most stuudents think that being on Google is actually researching, and that it is a thinking tool to help them research and learn. What a ridiculous proposition. Consider this all too real dialogue.

Mead: What are you doing?

Student: I'm researching about fair trade food.

Mead: and what thinking tool are you using?

Student: I'm googling, sir!

Mead: (In head. B*#lls another one!) Would you mind me having a look at your search criteria.


The student clicks back to reveal a not unreasonable input.

Mead; I agree with what you've typed in, but how does 69.5 million hits help you?

Students: ( Silence)

Mead: ( Good use of wait time, so, even more silence)

Student: So shall I use the webpages you have recommended?

Mead: What will that allow you to do?

Student: Find out what I want to know?

Mead: (raises eyebrows) Why were you on Google then?

Student: Errrrr.. I just was.


This is not what I imagined when I planned this lesson. Where are the conversations like this..


Mead: what are you upto?

Student: I'm researching about fair trade food.

Mead: how are you doing that?

Student: I'm using a PMI at the moment, I'm reading about a Ugandan Coffee farmer and what his daily life is like?

Mead: Learned anything new?

Students: I've decided that Fair trade is definately worth a few extra pence, and what Organic food is.

Mead: What helped you decide?......



The second problem is more insiduous, despite the instruction that "we are researching2 and a clear overview of the lesson plotted out on the board. Inevitably,I find half my class are on PowerPoint , while another quarter are choosing fonts for their wordart titles. Modern day colouring in. I'm not having this.

Strategies to help.

I have a few ideas that may help me out. Firstly, it is the relationship I have built with my students, so that I can give them honest feedback. I know that some students will actually follow my instructions, so I make a point of stopping the class to see "good practice". I also know that large numbers will head of into Google land and Font world, so I am planning a ten minute blitz at the beginning of the lesson. Again stopping everyone with yells of "Wow! everyone gather around to see what Giles has done!" Before then actually being more helpful but encouraging the class to give constructive feedback. After this ten minute spell I will return to the analogy of the tail wagging the dog. Other strategies include making clear the process of research with a over view of

Read/watch -------> Thinking Tool--------> Research.

and having explicit success criteria of "use a Thinking Tool of your choosing".

Finally and probably most important is to build in this problem and solution into the reflection. I will blog about this when I have compiled their responses.

So what are the benefits to me in overcoming these IT barriers to learning?

Well, I have spent an inordinate amount of time planning this lesson/ experience. I want to know if it works, have I structured it in a useful way? are the resources good enough? what tools do I need to reinforce in class? am I teaching the students the way I want them to do enquiries? is the content coming across? In a way I'm in the process of doing what Geoff Petty describes at the start of this blog.
Secondly, I much prefer to be useful during lessons, guiding prompting, questioning and providing mirrors for students to reflect about all of the above. I don't want to be solely responsible for keeping the students on task and not just busy. Ambitious I know but its a journey worth taking and its a lot more fun than being solely responsible for 25-30 peoples learning.

Which leads directly into the second item on my learning agenda.

2.Increase the students independence and decision making

I hope it is obvious that these things are connected and in fact entwined. So part of the problems I have been dealing with IT, are actually part of this. I can now ask the questions what decisions have you made today that has helped you learned, and seriously expect to get a considered answer. And decisively I can give praise for doing so. If a student has acted independently and avoided a distraction they will feel like the success is theirs, and that I have just caught them doing it. I feel they will be more likely to continue this positive learning behaviour than if I had of DEMANDED they do it my way. I also feel that these methods speed up and strengthen the trust between student and teacher. A worthwhile pursuit.

Although this is not my biggest tool in achieving the above, which is to teach my students how to enquire. I know this is not a quick thing, and have plotted two years worth of stepping stones to help them do so. But, the small things will add up over this time.Here's hoping!

A moving on map.

I have been covering a lesson on a fortnightly basis for around two months, to be honest I don't know the students that well. They have been working on a enquiry, based around the question "Are you what you eat?" The purpose of this is to teach the students the enquiry cycle we would like them to use in subsequent enquiries, and obviously develop the skills needed to learn independently. Since I don't know these students I have been finding it difficult to "pitch" the lesson correctly.

Today's task was to write a script for a range of characters who are giving their opinions on a basket of food. First, I explained the task and process to be done and set them away. The first five minutes were consumed by a string of students following me around the room saying "I'm stuck" "I don't know what to do!". The antithesis of where we want them to be. I didn't jump in with answers and spent alot of energy praising those who were stuck. A good first step, create a positive attitude to learning.

Next, since I was now getting odd looks and a general feeling of "He's not helping us!"( tudents need this feeling, which can only be created by stepping back for a short while, to truly feel independent and become motivated to do something about being stuck).it was then that I gathered them around a desk and started scribbling on a piece of flip chart paper. I love that stuff, it's so organic and encourages interactions. I started at the bottom with the word STUCK" and moved straight to the top and asked what is the end product of this activity. A student quickly responded with record a MP3 for your speeches. This is at the top.

So, I now asked what their choices were now that they were stuck, the students said get unstuck and suggested some generic ways of getting unstuck such as C3B4ME. "Or?" I asked and got "you could just sit there and get distracted" and a yelp of "STAY STUCK", I think this is when they could see I was now going to help them.

I asked what they would need to do to get unstuck and complete the job. Strangely (or perhaps not) they came up with write a script and practice it before they came up with the next step. These task go just before the completion of the task. This strategy is a more specific example of a moving on map developed by the teachers involved in the PEEL project. After a small re-explanation of the situation they found themselves in, they then thought reviewing what they already knew. So they did listen at the start! This then led to a planning strategy and student said " how do we generate ideas?"

I then gifted them the idea of thinking tools. After a painful couple of minutes I reminded them that they had used PMI, in a previous enquiry, which received recognising nods. So, then gave them an alternative of a Frame of Reference organiser, modelling how to use it. I must admit that I have never had such an enthusiastic take up of a thinking tool, may be because the generation of the characters opinions was the actual task they were finding difficulty, but I actually think it was because the tool had a context and a pedagogical purpose.

After a final discussion that enabled us to complete the stepping stones between where they were and where they wanted to be, I set them off. The atmosphere in the class was tangible, with the LSA I was working with recognising how much more they were on task.

Around ten minutes later, I asked the students to "place a dot on the map to tell me where you are, when you get a chance!" which they did. Three students where still stuck . So this was actually great feedback for me to start to target a few students with a bit more guidance and questioning.

I requested a cross on the map around fifteen minutes later, which was great as it clearly demonstrated that they were making progress and provided an opportunity to praise genuine improvement. Many of the students were up to generating the ideas to include in their speeches. One student was particularly methodical about this, so I gathered the students around so he could share what he was doing, I asked the class once he'd finished, are they doing this? two replied yes, then I asked who is going to do this? with a chorus of "great idea" the student raised his arms skywardin celebration !

One final check about fifteen minutes before the end, this time with squares, made it very easy for the students to plan what they need to do next lesson. The conversations I was now having had changed from, "I'm stuck what should I do" to "I'm going to draft the script at least twice because I'll add more detail".

I'm chuffed, and the reason, I did very little, the students took over as they were allowed to, as they had a structure that they had helped devise, they felt safe to take risks and the plan had obvious improvement chances and the activities had a clear and shared pedagogical purpose.

Abbie is never interested.

Having returned home after (what appeared to be) a great lesson with 8S2a on a Friday afternoon, I have decided to see exactly how successful I have been, if indeed I have. My gut feeling about this is that the students had done well, engaging in quite technically and cognitively difficult conversations; planning and setting up a scientific experiment.

They have been testing the 5 second rule, that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat if picked up within 5 seconds. The students have been challenged to think like scientists as I decided this was the day to try out the scientific thinking skills I have been developing over the course of this year. the specific one for today were: Clarity, Significance, Fairness and Relevance.


After an hour discussing, planning redrafting the students were tired but really getting into this kind of thinking. On return from a welcome lunch break the students set of to make decisions about the exact method they would use, and then set it up. The thing that struck me was the quality of they were having between themselves and with me were fantastically detailed and show remarkable reflection from the students.

At the end of the session I directed them to a wallwisher site, to answer the question "how have you thought like a scientist?" I was hoping to extract the kind of language I had introduced them to earlier, and from this be able to reflect upon their successes and then decide the next steps. They had around about 5 minutes to do this. A simple quick model of efficient assessment for learning if I do say so myself! Let see if it works and does it back up my gut feeling. I am getting quite into evidence based teaching at the moment. I am writing as I analyse so this could turn out to be a damp squid of a post. The important thing for me is that the process is making me thinking about what my students said or did.


So the outcomes for this and the next lesson are:-

And here are their end of lesson reflections

So here goes....

The first thing I notice is that the word bacteria is used frequently, which indicates that outcome A is sorting it self out. I was very conscious in planning this lesson that the content part, as small and would receive no directed teaching activities, as students should begin to pick these up through the activity. It seems that the research is right. I can safely assume that I will not need to do anything extra about this outcome. The reflective question asked is intentionally not content based, but still this learning comes to the surface.

Outcome B is also represent in this brief review, with "Wolfy" referring directly to their growth, and Liam describing bacteria multiplying. I'm loving this so far. Even the conceptual knowledge, albeit a simple one,is being learned with a targeted activity.

The numerous mention of the five second rule is suggesting that the link between bacteria and risk to health is being made. Kaylie and Brandon also start developing this a little talking about even clean surfaces have bacteria on them. Despite this, I think this will be a valid place to start next lesson with a question like " Does the Five section rule keep you safe?" just to make the link explicit to all and it will lead to a discussion about evidence, which is where I want the lesson to head next.

One thing is beginning to emerge, and that is the confidence and the enjoyment the students have had from their learning. This is not an outcome but does suggest that learning has taken place. Despite me phrasing the review question as "How have you thought like a scientist?" a large number of students have started their comment with I have learned. Abbie even goes as far as "I was very interested". Abbie is never interested. Emily is proud and "Baxter" is obviously pleased with the praise I gave "so na na na na :)" She even knows what she was praised for.


I am also able to identify the students who have just focused on the content and not mentioned the process. So, when the class begins the end of activity debrief I will focus on these students. I will also have a chat with max to get him to explain his comment, I'm not sure what he means and I'm not sure he does either.


The area that I'm not sure these brief comments will give me is the procedural knowledge and the meta cognitive outcomes. Are they using the scientific thinking language introduced today. Tom's comment about how to test for bacteria, although not clear hints that the idea of a scientific test has come through. A few students comment upon their thinking one even describes it as deep (and I would agree with her, a marvelous student) and one other describes creating a fair test. I think there is a some awareness of their thinking.



"Baxter" has genuinely surprised me with her comments, normally a distracted and distracting student she shows a great understanding of the concepts in the lesson. Impressively she identifies the need to collect evidence to the question being ask.This means that she is at least aware of the need for clear questions and relevant data. She has picked up on two of the big themes in the lesson. This being outcomes F and G. This is pleasing, now does anyone else. Lewis talks about fare (sic) test and Clare talks about "developing" question. We did draft the questions and then I model my thinking on deciding which was a good one. The process is apparent. "JoRDAn" seems to be suggesting to be looking for proof, so this may indicate he is aware of the need to produce evidence again outcome G.



This is obviously a tricky decision, I think some students have grasped these concepts where others have missed the boat. This is a little at odds with some of the conversationa with the students. This is the great thing about formally reflecting upon lessons, I'm trawling my brain to look for evidence that my students were successful. "JoRDAn" was very perceptive about fair tests and identifying problems this does not come across in his comment. Putting it all in perspective, the fact that this is the students first introduction to the new thinking language and the reflection only took 5 minutes today. The signs are positive some students clearly understand. So my next step will be to recap the language and to keep modelling it, the final task in this enquiry is for the students to self assess themselves. I will introduce this material earlier in the lesson than I originally planned.


So, I've learned a lot about my students again not by marking books but by considering in detail the evidence the students presented. I have students to target for help, to praise. I have a lesson starter that is needed by the students, and have been able to amend my next lesson plan to support my students. A worthwhile hour spent not marking books.

Metacognitive Musings

While my class worked away on a research task today, as part of an enquiry style project. I pondered on how they were setting about the task, having been, if not clear fairly insistent that they read and then use a thinking tool to record their research notes. I have spent an inordinate amount of time asking the same inane questions "Why are you using PowerPoint?" and "When did I ask you to Present your findings"

Here lies my problem with ICT, it is a huge distraction to the thinking students need to do to learn. The metaphor "the tails wagging the dog again" is a regular battle cry in my room, and is the the reason for me insisting on the students using a thinking tool to process the information found.

So despite my class looking very busy i was curious.

Having read a very interesting article by Paul Pintrich, in Theory Into Practice.http://tinyurl.com/lxfl7y , which subdivides the strategies used to learn into three parts, Rehearsing, Elaborating and Organising together with metacognitive strategies (about the strategies used) and strategic problem solving. I simplified these and hope their do not loose to much of their meaning in the translation.



I drafted up a table to help them reflect on the processes they were using and armed them with a post it note. Asked them to write what strategies they had used so far and classify them against this grid. In other words what did they think the strategy helped them do with the information?







So here are the responses summarised. I have categorised them as either a strategy or not using smileys. I then discussed the original responses with the class, and hopefully the influence of this meta cognition can be clearly seen.

So, what do I think it tells me.

Firstly by the end of the session the students are commenting on more process at the expense of content with five less responses. Indicating at least some understanding that the process is important.

Secondly that the idea of research can be a noun, they can produce it by using a variety of processes. Although I don't think they are yet sophisticated enough to be specific in describing how, they have identified research as an actual strategy to research with less! Hoorah!

Thirdly, despite only getting one more strategy in the second half of the lesson, I was particularly pleased by the improvement in quality. For example students realising that they had to plan research, that they should consider what they and they peers already know. These are mainly meta cognitive strategies which did not appear at all in the first reflection. This is exciting.

So not bad for an hour. I think this simple strategy has raised the issue of meta cognition and pedagogical purposes for these students, a first step maybe but one that had to be taken.