Students talking about the benefits of Critiques and Drafting

As part of creating a learning an agenda in my classroom  I like to keep the pedagogical purposes of the strategies used clear and open. So it is easy to imagine how pleased I was when a student turned up today with two drafts of their work! These year 7 students are redrafting a Scientific write up. They have experienced one full critique before this one. It's nice to see how accepting of challenge and hard work they are. The quality of their work matters to them and they feel as though they are learning by doing this.

The most interesting thing for me in this how they see the benefit of the Feedback Norms as lead to to something helpful, and not just being told to do it again. Again this is indicative of the need for a classroom culture that allows and nutures high quality student work. Another small step towards this I think......

SOLO taxonomy, planning and progress..

Today, a group of year students have been completing an extended writing task based around the wonderful PEEL strategy "fact in fiction". Since we had not seen each other for a week I structured a few tasks to remind them of the content ( and resources) and to facilitate the connection of concepts.

First, was a group task that had them as a list key ideas about the Immune system, a chance familiarise themselves with the content once again. A pure multistructural task.

Next  they were to define and distinguish between some key vocabulary. Words I knew they had struggled with in the previous lesson. The distinguish element to this was to ensure a relational understanding.

Another relational task followed, but this time choice was given  either comparing two ideas using a comparison alley or using an analogy map to create mental models for how these two ideas work. I was pleased to introduce choice as some of the analogies were very revealing. I particularly enjoyed the students likening lymphocytes to a bottle of  bleach as they release a chemical against pathogens.


All of these tasks were designed to be about five minutes in length and very much focused on the content. The next one was more complex but I'm hoping will lead to a detailed sequence. Again a relational task but required several pieces of complex information being used. The keywords here are the conceptual parts of this content.

The final task was to complete the fact in fiction task. This involves writing a fictional story inserting relevant facts along the way, but the clever bit is the insistence that the facts are underlined along the way. This encourages the use of key vocabulary and regular reflection. It is obvious when work is lacking in the content, this visual nature makes it easy for the students to see omissions and flaws in their work. There are opportunities for students to work in an extended abstractt way here and at the very least it encourages relational thinking. (See below for an example) 


SOLO taxonomy has helped the planning by making it easier to see the increase in the demand of each task and focus on the key connections important for understanding this topic. It is in this way that knowledge and understanding can be built, and teachable moments found and then focus upon what matters, in understanding and for the students at that time. Simple everyday tasks are easily sequenced to plan for (more) complex responses in student work. 


 An example of Fact in Fiction task

A weary travellers tale.

 (A fact in fiction writing task)

 Bob and Billy are twins. Identical twins the same in every way. They have just returned from holiday in China. Bob is jet lagged but is generally just dandy! Billy is not. He is feeling unwell. He has a fever, diarrhoea, and a rose coloured rash. Five weeks before they went, they had an appointment to be vaccinated for Typhoid and Malaria. Unfortunately, Billy had double booked with a hair appointment. His hair look superb on the plane, even the air hostess said so! 


 Your task is to complete the story of Bob and Billy outlining how Billy gets better with the help of his immune system. You must use as many scientific facts as possible. Underline them as you go. Make sure you include the following

•  How the white blood cells in Bobs body are working to protect him. 
•  Name the two types of white blood cell
•  How they immune system will fight the disease
•  What its means to be immune 
• What a vaccination is and how it works. 
• Which disease Billy has, why you think this and what type of microbe is causing it

 Good luck.

Student work using fact in fiction 

A video example of a critique

This is not a perfect example of a critique session, but many of the features of one are present.

Critique of E- Safety Games


Firstly the use of the Feedback norms, about being kind, specific and helpful are present. The session starts  with a look at strengths of each piece of work. Although difficult, every example has a positive. I intentionally went through every piece of work for this reason, giving value to their work so far.

The whole class ethos of this is emphasised with the question " what will you steal? what idea will you to take to use in your own work?" This is a key point to critiques, its not about getting feedback to one student but away of all students understanding what high quality is like. If I wanted to give one student feedback I'd do that one to one myself. What I want here was to emphasise that we are all in this together.

The specific nature of the questioning, always seeking clarification and specificity, whilst reserving judgement. This allows a frank discussion of what is needs to be done.

Possibly the weakest area of this critique is the focus on the content, although the issues around the topic do surface, as they always do. Critiques are great way to teach content.