Through a SOLO lens.

For me SOLO taxonomy is an integrated part of my Teaching and Learning repertoire. It serves many purposes, very well as I learn more. It HELPS in many ways, I 'm using the help here pejoratively as the content of the learning (whether it be factual, conceptual, procedural or metacognitive knowledge) will determine the appropriate pedagogy. SOLO gives this process more clarity.

It helps breakdown overarching Learning Intentions into manageable, progressive chunks. The quantitative sections (Uni and Multistructural) sections are the foundations on which the rest of the learning will be built, often but not exclusively "essential learnings". Progress between the Unistructural and Multistructural sections are relatively simple to plan for, providing information is "hit" between three and four different ways, ensuring retention and relevance of student responses. Relational learning often brings about those activities that allow students to see the information in different ways.

SOLO also helps focus on what kind of thinking is helpful given the knowledge being studied. Radically I don't believe we can teach people to think.It's something we do as we are human. It's natural. People think. However, we can teach the importance of thinking in different ways to gain different perspectives. SOLO  helps focus on what kind of thinking is currently useful.

SOLO taxonomy is not a start point for planning learning, no tool or activity is, who would wander the aisles of Homebase picking out the best high revolution precision cutter, and then decide what to make (although I'd love one). However, it does help ensure clarity and progression within the content knowledge.When planning lessons or schemes of learning I tend to write down all the big content and skill ideas that the students need to know, then group them by concept, and only then do I view them with a SOLO lens. 

Looking at the learning intentions through a SOLO lens helps first plot any progressions that have already arisen, but most important makes me consider what are the essential learnings that students need to have before they understand or do what I want them to learn. In a way I back fill the building blocks of a concept. Sometimes, this is not possible and therefore I get to see clearly where the "leaps of faith" are needed. I never worry about this I'm "Nuthallian". I witnessed a student learn something a French lesson today, brilliantly the teacher had posed a question that required the distilling of a grammar rule, as well as seeking multiple responses from students. He started his response with " I was thinking that the answers was...." and then used one of the best thinking words "but" and continued to ascribe his learning to the responses the other students he had just heard, He concluded beautifully with "So they were right and the rule is this....it makes sense" As I said a leap of faith, but one where SOLO could make me aware of where I might need to  scaffold more, or target my formative assessment. This example is probably the commonest "leap of faith" for SOLO and for me the most difficult to plan for, getting to Extended Abstract. Sometimes, this is solved by a single question. "Would the student learning of THIS content  benefit from spending time contemplating a Extended Abstract activity?" If the answer is NO, then I don't crowbar it in. The SOLO levels are a tool, not a destination.

Its not uncommon for my Learning intentions of gaps. Keep it relevant to the content

If the answer is YES, then SOLO provides a structure to visualise potential next steps. I really like the logical nature and it fits beautifully with Science .I know colleagues have found this to be true across all "subjects", but in all cases it content knowledge view with the SOLO lens. The simplified way it represents content knowledge and how increasing complexity can be achieved. This probably  explains why it's transferable.
For me the first appeal was the to assess the quality of student work and in doing so naturally fell in to using it  to provide feedback. It was not until much later that I understood its full potential in developing progression in Learning Intentions that can be tracked, and this for me turns the "leaps of faith" into manageable, "plan-able"  and visible learning steps.

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. 

Project Card = A summary of Wild About Cramlington

Metacognition of an Enquiry

Following on from my experience at Bristol. I have compiled all the recorded metacognitive thinking I did during this experience. In the hope of finding patterns in the thinking that one needs to do to be a successful enquirer, in order that I can provide tools and structures for my students. This is a work in progress. Any comments, analysis, ponderings are all gratefully recieved.
https://docs0.google.com/document/edit?id=1GIE1NPtznOTnNKs8_8yUDea2kBEftfOMlljjRJNzxBQ&hl=en&authkey=COm4r74L#

Students DO make progress with SOLO Taxonomy.

It is a fine feeling when your gut feeling has a concrete and real basis. This is a reflection of my first terms use of SOLO taxonomy.

The graph above shows a year 7 mixed ability Science class working over four SOLO and assessed tasks. It clearly demonstrates that my students are making progress up the SOLO Taxonomy scale in a measurable fashion. I think this graph also shows my progress in using SOLO in providing quality feedback. I am aiming to reflect on some of the processes and discussion that occurred in between these points. (I will dedicate the final paragraph to explaining how this data has been compiled.) Although, I must point out that the scores discussed here are solely for analysis and reflective purposes and the students have not and will not have it reduced down to a number. SOLO taxonomy provides a framework for discussion of work during lessons, for comment only feedback and for self assessment for the students.

Although the first two points clearly show progress form a score of around 0.5 to 1.0, I believe this is only establishing a useful baseline assessment of my students as they enter their new school. I think it also shows the lack of my skill in using this tool, as 0.5 indicates that half the class are operating on average at a prestructural level. and that the progress made suggests that on average everyone is working at the unistructural level. In reality two students had progressed to the Relational level while not one single student recorded a multistructural level score on the first task. So, I am not overwhelmed by its immediate impact, but it's certainly seemed to move the students in the right direction. I must also confess that my strategy to introduce a generic SOLO was very much by stealth. It was visible in the class ,but, only gradually dropped into the conversation when opportunity presented. The first two pieces of work were self assessed by the students using a content specific criteria using the SOLO structure. No attempt was made to introduce the language straight off. I don't know if this was the right thing to do, but, I felt that the students had a lot to cope with managing the transition to a new school.

The third activity here was a group presentation, so I feel that this has skewed the data a little, as some of the weaker kids scored their highest scores in this activity. This makes me want to underplay the progress here, as this suggests that on average the class is now at Multistructural and the raw data shows no one has remained prestructural, pleasing as this is it is not assessing individual performance.

However the value of this activity is significant, as it is this stage that I and my students began to fully come to terms with using it. The students made a presentation that required using several pieces of information/data to draw a conclusion. I listened to them and made notes and then together we used the evidence gathered to assign their group a level. This generated great dialogue which I believe has had a lasting impact. Some students were even saying things along the lines of " If we had of said this ......would we have get the next level".

Following this activity I made a presentation at the Teachmeet Northeast, about SOLO taxonomy where I came up with an analogy of its use. I decided to use it with my students and formally introduce SOLO taxonomy . It went down a storm with some students even recognising and identifying the levels before I had explained them, maybe stealth works as a teaching strategy. The students were also provided with a large copy of the taxonomy for their desks as they worked as a reference. The students went onto complete the fourth activity in this review. Half way through I took several statements from student work and asked them to assess where they thought it was, and how to improve it. I felt at the time this discuss was useful so I photographed the examples. Whilst marking the students scripts I was especially pleased by the amount of crossing out, arrows to add new details in and squashed sentences into gaps that really were not there. Pretty no, but indicative of reflection and demonstration of their understanding of not only the content of the lesson but of SOLO taxonomy too

So, overall this activity yielded a score of around 2.5 on this scale indicating that the majority of the students where working at the relational level albeit within small bits of content. This has been the thrust of my feedback about broadening out teheir knowledge base so that more and a wider range of connections could be made. All in all this set of data demonstrates the students making progress through the use and structure of the SOLO taxonomy, in a relatively small period of time.

How the data was produced.

Each SOLO level was assigned a score from 0- 6. (I have meddled with the structure slightly.)
The number of students at each level were tallied for each activity and multiplied by that score.

The score was then divided by the number of students in the class to give an average score per student.

The score has then been plotted against the order of these SOLO assessed tasks.

10 benefits for empowering your lessons with pedagogical purposes.

The term pedagogical purpose designates an learning activity an extra benefit rather than just delivering a bit of learned content. Meaning that by definition it is shared by the teacher with the learners. The idea came from PEEL in Australia. Check out its website ( www.peelweb.org) for excellent classroom based examples. So why include them in your lesson plan?

1. It encourages metacognition,and therefore will develop learner skills or build learning power as Guy Claxton would say. For example if a strategy is good for making comparisons such as venn diagrams, then by signaling this purpose the teacher creates awareness in their learners. This leads to the next benefit of...

2. Increased independence of students. Having a pedagogical purpose in every day lessons will assist students in enquiry based or problem based learning lessons. They will have a wider range of "tools" to get unstuck and learn by themselves.

3. On task behaviour and the quality of work improves as students take each task seriously, after all each task has a purpose.

4. Teachers plan better lessons as they stop planning "busy" task and start including focussed learning activities, which are easier and more productive in creating feedback loops to exploit.

5. It increases teacher reflection on their classroom. Asking why strategies work will lead to asking how can I adapt this strategy which will eventually lead to creating your own.

6. The next natural step in this process is Action research which is well documented as a very effective form of professional development. So rather than sharing anecdotes with your PLN, you can share and discuss objective data based analysis of the new things you are trying on your classroom.

7. Teachers will dismiss the notion of having a teachers toolkit that they can dip into. Pedagogical purposes are an engineering factory allowing teachers to become more autonomous.

8. It's flexible so can be used with pre and post diluvian strategies. Infact it may be more beneficial when using web 2.0 tools to prevent them becoming the new PowerPoint, I.e. The educational equivalent of colouring in.

9. Pedagogical purposes broaden the feedback a teacher can give. The research by Black and Williams indicates that good feedback should indicate where the students are, where they should be heading and how to get there. It is this final steps that pedagogical purposes fit best.

10. They help develop a teachers pedagogical content knowledge, so teachers can develop multiple strategies to teach the same topic, understand and identify the misconceptions students are likely to have. Ultimately teachers are better equipped to teach, unteach and reteach.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Finding Success in low achieving students . Challenging my own folk theories.

Probably inspired by reading Carl Bereiter, I have just spent several days pulling apart an apparent simple decision, asking myself why I would use a strategy with my students.The strategy in question is a tried and tested one, or so I thought. I used to do this and my recollections are all positive, and I believe it had an impact on not only student motivation but also their success.
All it involves is displaying the most successful students in the class after and test. Not, by their raw score but by how much they beat their targets by. Obviously a percentage target is useful. My expereinces of this with many classes, always in the first instance had one or two students meeting or exceeding their targets, with the number growing over subsequent tests and over the year ending up with one or two not on the list. I have always found that students are especially excited to find their results in this fashion and that students not minding this score displayed even if they missed their target. This was always done after a negotiation, and therefore I could rank the scores. I stopped using it when we ditched percentage targets in favour of a sub division of SAT levels.

So where does this dilema lie? It was a great strategy as my gut feeling tells me that it often found success for the weaker students in my class. I felt as though it leveled the playing field in terms of ability. It's more democratic right!? Everyone has a target based on the same data; CAT scores or KS2 aggregated scores in this case, it must be fair!? Therefore everyone can be succesful. But as I began to compile the class scores I began to notice (or at least imagined) a pattern. This may be a result of reading a lot by Carl Bereiter debunking the notions of Folk theories in education, that things work because they, on the surface can be made to appear that they work, but in reality they do not stand upto scrutiny. This has resulted in me questioning my pedagogical purpose of using this strategy.

The problem I have is two fold. Firstly, I am concerned that this strategy is more difficult for higher ability students to better their targets,as they have less room for manouvre, or so my folk theory tells me. I have reminded myself that this strategy is not primarily for them, and that they enjoy success in its purest form. The best marks and grades, as this graph of two of my classes bares out.More able students get better scores. Which prompts two thoughts why bother testing them if CAT scores are this reliable, and that the test I used is valid across the ability range.

The next thing I queried was why some well motivated students had not met or exceeded their targets. Part of our school review requires us to rate students responsibility for the learning; taking into account motivation, amount of on task behaviour and their ability to get unstuck. All learner qualities you may assume would impact on this kind of study. But not in my post-Bereiter world, the evidence suggest not with the two classes below showing a very slight regression in this respect.
So my less motivated and "lazier" students appear to be beating their targets more. Although it should be pointed out that their is a slight correlation between their responsibility for learning and overall success, but it's not as strong as I imagined. What on earth am I doing wrong with them? I'm not if I am not very good at teaching high ability, as my less motivated ones are progressing well? Do I need an alternative stategy to also motivate and challenge the more motivated? I am hoping that this strategy will motivate all.

Obviously this is what has stumped me. It may be that motivation has little impact on actual learning, it could be that these students are learning with what they are doing? It may be that the more able students are slightly penalised by this strategy? My gut folk theory is that it does. Indeed the next graph suggests an element of truth in these sentiments.

It could be something and nothing, after all it's not a strong correlation. But, what I have decided is that if this strategy works, I should see the recumbent motivated learner rise over the next few tests to create a positive correlation, and more importantly that I have more students celebrating as they have beaten their target. This situation pleases me now as I have a
testable hypothesis with an attached success criteria. I can begin to move away from my folk theory and find out something about how my students work.

Comparing a (more) Tradional approach to marking to SOLO taxonomy

Following on from my last post, I have just marked the same class set of books. This time how ever was much more content focused, I'm trying to find out what if anything my students have learned. So my feedback this time is purely around Science content.

I am pleased to report that I only spent the same length of time as my previous marking effort, and I have managed using my level ladders gathered a small quantity of information about my students. Namely can they distinuguish between an Element, Mixture and Compound. I also feel more able to attach a SAT level to their knowledge. So not that useful really. I feel I have learned nothing about them as students (except two) and my feedback is limited.

A note on my codes. BM is Book marked, OBS is observed during lesson and DQ is when I have directly questioned a student around this concept.

I know patience is the key with this kind of marking and that over the course of a module a level ladder will allow me to collect a lot of valid information about where academically my students are. It's just going to take hours and hours. I will point out that I'm not intending on collecting all the evidence by marking books and have planned activities that will allow me to observe this learning. I also have planned questions to ask during lessons that will reveal who understands and who doesn't. All will be recorded , valued. and reflected upon.
The two students who are a bit different are a difficult boy who I now know understands alot more than he will let me know and a girl who knows abit but has no eye for detail so that despite understanding the lesson her work misses the point. For the boy, It has allowed me to praise genuinely for once.
I do feel better about this marking than I would normally as i have been marking against learning intentions. A proven effective strategy. I was also able to set each student individual tasks to clarify, consolidate and extend their ideas. Set at the begining of my lesson, they students responded well, question themselves and each other about what they learned last lesson. It's this connection that is the real value of my effort marking books. It is also useful to compile these findings for the whole class to provide real evidence to base "moving on" decisions.

But, I must confess that in terms of real ( not fact or content based) learning, the feedback focused on one thing, and is not transferable, nor progressive, whereas the feedback I gave them using SOLO taxonomy is. I have already planned their next assessment task and it is based around SOLO. I'm looking forward to putting this "transferability" and of course my students to the test.

This Years Teacher Record Sheet

Last year I was determined to make the most of the informal observations that I would make as a matter of course during teaching. I thought long and hard about what I would see in my class, part of this was to catch the students doing something right. So last year I redrafted this four times to get it right.

So, it is therefore obvious that I have started a fresh this year. Although I have definitely learned something. I am hopeful that this years model, is more focused on the learning my students are doing and will inform the next teaching/ learning step easily. This will be shared with my students at the very start of the year. Every student will have one that I will fill in during lessons and when I look at their work.

The first section is all about improving on task behaviour, students work better if they think you are watching them, hence my insistence in not solely recording if homework is completed, but class written work, learning tasks such as a card sort and their involvement in discussions. The final one is so important to record as all students should be involved in this, for many reasons some students will struggle to complete all written tasks. I also want to add value on task discussions.

The second section is all about the quality of their learning, and, again this will completed during and after lessons. It is based around my own interpretation of Biggs Solo Taxonomy. It is one of my key focuses of my learning agenda this year, so it should be helpful to centralise this. I must stress that this is not just for written work and sitting in and listening to conversations will be just as valid.

The next section is a relic from last year, which is the ANECDOTES section, a hugely powerful classroom management tool. Poor learning behaviours being recorded and then recited back to students changes behaviour. Take for example " This is the third time this half term that you have not had a pen, you did not have one on the 12th and 19th of June!" Students very quickly get embarrassed into doing something different. More importantly the recording of good learning behaviours turns out to be a reward in itself, all with the added benefit of basically writing your reports as you go along. The anecdotes will include significant events and notes taken form random classroom scans.

I have added my schools Five R'S of good learning characteristics. These being Reasoning, Reflectiveness, Responsible, Resourceful, and Resilience. To reflect upon afterwards, possibly through discussion with the students. I intend to classify them positive or negative for each characteristic. The motivation for this is that this makes up a big part of our student monitoring and reporting system. So I want at least some evidence to reflect upon rather than just a gut feeling.

Then finally comes the assessment section, the things I would normally record in my record book, exam scores and grades for individual tasks but also a grade based upon topic specific observations made per topic. (More on this too follow.) The other novelty included is a record of science specific thinking skills which I am currently developing in place of the new APP's.

So there you have it draft one of this years record keeping, hopefully learning focused, dialogue fueling, and evidenced based decision guiding. Any comments on improvements are gratefully accepted. I'm sure draft two is just around the corner.

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.