Drafting work and Portfolio books- An Update post.

As a prelude to this post it will be worth reading Nick Dennis succinct blog post An Ethic of Excellence- in opposition to “quickfixes”, which coincidentally is kind of the point here. This post is a reflection to my learning goals set at the start of this academic year.#

I must confess to sense growing well being when considering the impact of Portfolio books. The majority of students now understand their purpose which is a vast improvement from our first attempts at using them. This has presented two major obstacles to overcome. 

Firstly, the hard wired nature of completing “schooling” tasks. That is to say that once complete students believe they are finished. This is unsurprising as most of what they do at school is precisely this. Task done, teacher ticks and on we move – the relentless factory model of education at its most pernicious. Thankfully this cycle is easy to break, although whether it remains broken is a different question.

Secondly, and this is entirely based on the student experience of the above, is that students genuinely do not understand what their best is, since they have rarely had an opportunity to demonstrate it. Surely that’s a teachers job, but the delivery model again occludes.

So, what I have learned so far is the importance of culture. All of my year 7 and 8’s have so far written up one practical piece of work, identified and stressed as “work to be proud” of. Obviously, some students grasp this straight away others remain ignorant, bu,t the culture remains expectant of excellence through hard work and the drafting of work. Each write up has began in lesson time ensuring a shared structure and success criteria for these piece of work and then have been completed as a home learning task. This has then been followed up through a whole class critique of one or two students work to refine and exemplify what excellence could look like. The students have then again been given (a little) class time and a home learning task to improve their work. Again care has been taken to mention that their portfolio work, with that multiple drafts of improving work, is another way to demonstrate successful learning and another way to value their hard work.

A problem encountered.

 If you know a redraft is coming how do you put all your effort in when you know you’re going to do it again. I have no answer to this yet, but I hope the portfolio book will help at least place some expectation upon these tasks. This renders task selection ( and design) essential. I am sure some of my students have encountered this sentiment and have expressed it verbally as well as in sub-par work. They have said things like “will we have to re-do this?” which I have taken care and time to challenge in a positive way. My response has always been to distinguish between redoing and drafting. Redoing implies copying out neater like cutting the lawn, while drafting infers improving and learning. It is a fine distinction, particularly for students, but what is at the heart is the establishment of a critiquing and drafting culture.

So far all students have improved their work in at least two features of their work. Some have made huge leaps in their work. It may be easy to detract from these improvements and claim its due to teacher influence or help from peers and therefore not reproducible by students in their everyday work. But, this is not a quick fix, teaching for its better part is not a set of tricks, tools or gimmicks. It’s about trustful relationships where challenge and expectation can over time develop not only good scientists (in this case) but also a vibrant work ethic and aspiration. At the very least these students now have a model of, if not excellent work, at least good (or for some improving ) work in their books. Its ownership and it’s a starting point.

The recurring power o critiques.

Through all my experience of running critiques with students one thing has continued to surprise me, and that is how much these discussion remain about learning science ( content knowledge). This in itself is a massive selling point for the selection certain tasks at regular intervals throughout the year to critique and redraft. It allows you to revisit and develop understanding of the content that your subject values. It forces students to question what they understand and what they don’t and give opportunity for them to communicate this in several ways. It’s teaching.

The next steps will be more evident after the next student task. Year 7 have began writing up a long term experiment on plant growth, so different content knowledge but the scientific thinking utilised in design, carrying out and analysing experiments remains constant. After the initial discussion of the success criteria, I can already see the improvement, and I’m suitably expectant of work approaching their best. Year 8, is a little more problematic as their next task is an extended writing one, so the similarities are less specific and therefore the transfer I am hoping for is more cultural. We will see if this happens. 

SOLO and connectives lesson reflection

My year 8 students are currently studying a module called " Do we still need fossil fuels?" which culminates in an extended writing piece in response to this question. They will peer critique (review) in small groups producing a journal collecting 5 different articles.This is part of our school wide focus on developing literacy.


As part of the preparation for this writing, I wanted to share with them useful connectives that would not only develop their literacy but also their thinking within the article. An opportunity presented itself with our use of the Electrocity SIM game. The Electrocity game was to be part of their on going research. before they started gaming each group had to name their town and come up with its priorities/ principles/mission statement. This serves two purposes, it establishes a narrative at the start of this enquiry of things they are interested in and secondly tells them that they can use the game as a way of researching what "will happen if...." scenarios.
I came up with the idea of listening into student conversations,recording on post it notes the the connectives used.I planned to debrief the students frequently, around every 7 minutes or so, ranking the connectives against SOLO taxonomy,thereby creating a just in time need to be taught about using connectives to develop our thinking.This was primarily achieved by understanding that their initial game playing session would involve a combination of "how do i play" and ""Hey we are playing games distraction. I knew that much if the conversation would be Prestructural at this point, with comments along the lines of "Cool you can build a stadium" or " Get a wind farm" So the second part of the debrief would be about compiling the connectives that they knew and I (surreptitiously) offered and again ranking them against SOLO. We were providing the next step.

Note how SOLO has been added as students started using returning to the SOLO feedback unexpectedly .

Another vital part of this session was the non judgemental feedback provided against observed use of resources. The helpful resources that we had made in previous lessons such as the "info scrolls", their notes, the information on the EON and Electrocity websites. All were highlighted at the beginning of the session, with a clear expectation the they should be used to inform decisions. Of course they were not, but this would change simply by counting usage and feeding it back. As can be seen in th ephotograph above.

The procedure was repeated once the students had settled back into game play. Notes were made on a different coloured set of post it notes to allow us to see progress made.It was pleasing to see that nearly all groups were now dipping into the resources albeit tentatively. The conversations began to change and they began to at least give reasons for the choices they wanted to make (i.e. the prevelance of "because" became noticeable). Many students returned to the principles they set up at the beginning with statements along the "we wanted to be as green as possible so we must use the wind turbines", demonstrating the power of establishing a narrative in enquiry work.
Again the students were gathered and their comments assessed against SOLO taxonomy. It was obvious with the different coloured post it notes that progress was being notes. NB; I am fully aware that the students were able to play the "Connectives" game and say the things they thought I wanted to hear. However I am unconcerned by this "imitation" work as they are actually practising the use of connectives. Exactly the point I was making.

I was very fortunate to have  @JamiePortman and @Gwynap visiting and acting as observers with me. So the of connectives was practiced consistently by all throughout the lesson. Although, the progress the students made over the whole lesson suggests that they had began to use these as their own. They had learned to use them through practice.

The following picture can be read as follows . The left had side is what the students had said i.e they current position. The post its on the right their next steps. SOLO taxonomy made this very easy to do for both my students and me. Orange Post Its were used in the first attempt mainly Pre and Unistructural. Blue the second attempt which is mainly Relational but with some Prestructural and Unistructural showing that some students required more practice at using this (well I never! Graham Nuthall correct AGAIN) and the final attempt in Green which interestingly had nothing below Relational!
I think what this shows is that SOLO taxonomy is a great way of giving and structuring feedback, and how by sharing the progress they are making can lead to more progress due to greater engagement.

Solo taxonomy and Connectives.

My comrade in SOLO @clarky099 a little while back started to compile connectives that would encourage students to think at the next level. I have two lessons coming up, one of which is perfect for training the use of them, soon to be followed by  an extended writing task. It is obvious that not only  the  literacy will be enhanced,  but also in the thought behind the writing by use of these connectives. Building on the Damien's work, I have added and classified some connective against (and for use with ) SOLO taxonomy. Im hoping to gather more and especially collate some subject specific ones. 

I'm using these tomorrow by (hopefully) listening in to student conversations and making notes on Post it notes to capture the connectives being used. At regular intervals I will use these notes to debrief the student conversation and hopefully modify it, so that they at the very least begin to use these connectives as part of their conversations. 

There is a Google doc if anyone cares to contribute. SOLO CONNECTIVES

Extended Abstract	In conclusion … In summary … To sum up … Overall … On the whole … To conclude … So, to round up.. That will lead to.. If ...then.. Its just like ....because...
Relational	More importantly … This can be proven by … so … As a result of … … because … This means that … Equally … As with … … are .... As for … … whereas … … while … similar in that Mainly … Mostly … Usually … Unfortunately … Most often	Due to the fact that … … due to … … therefore … … caused … This caused Compared with … Similarly … In the same way … Likewise … However … On the other hand … … although … Despite this … On the contrary … Instead … But... When...
Multistructural	Firstly, secondly, Finally … To being with … On top of this … In addition to this … Additionally …	… and … … also … … as well … Futhermore … Another … Not only … but also
Unistructural	For example … For instance … Such as …

Project Card = A summary of Wild About Cramlington

Example of assessment and Feed forward using SOLO Taxonomy.

One  of the reasons I find SOLO such a useful framework is that it allows me to provide content related feedback to students, as well as "feedforward" (thanks @CHarte) to students. This helps develop student thinking and the quality of student work. I hope these examples illustrate how obvious the next steps in subsequent pieces of work are for these students. I find it a happy blend of specific and generic that makes it accessible to students.