SOLO Taxonomy

Tonight I read Alice’s comments about her use of SOLO Taxonomy in her class. She has done a great job of simplifying the language and using effective visuals to communicate the message. It makes me think about what I am implementing and I wonder if it will all be a bit too complicated.

During this week I introduced a task I have been mulling over for a while. It relates to a video I saw at Deb Masters presentation last year, which related to the SOLO Taxonomy. In the video a young New Zealand student verbally described, with the aid of a visual display behind him, exactly where he was on a learning continuum and where he was heading using what he needed to be able to do to get there. The school was near a quarry and so each step on the continuum was a big boulder.

The task my students were set this week was to design a concept for a game. The game needed to have four levels, which build in complexity. It also needed to include themselves as a main character, (they could have superhuman traits, or be an animal, etc). They also needed to decide on the setting for the game, eg. Futuristic, forest, etc. They need to be able to present their concept to the class on Monday. They have been encouraged to find an interesting way to present, either orally or using visual tools.

The students have responded eagerly to this task. It could be built on to work on descriptive writing, and narrative text types. My aim is to then get students to use this as a reference point and analogy to describe their own learning in various contexts. I will introduce the Structured Observable Learning Outcomes and see if they can make the links between this model and their game. Not sure whether this will be too difficult for them? An A4 poster may be good to have as a reference point in the students’ Assessment Folder. I had thought that I would also make some sort of class chart. I was going to use a Morton Bay Fig Tree design, but perhaps this is a bit too ambitious?

Roots (Pre-structural) – trunk (Unilateral) – branches (Multilateral) – Fruit (Relational) – Seeds (Extended abstract)

20130222-225913.jpg

20130222-225941.jpg

20130222-230118.jpg

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Leave a Reply