SOLO

Summer reading has been inspiring this year. I've been following Didau's blog and discussing the implementation of the SOLO taxonomy to lesson design with my colleague, the wonderful Jack Eiles.

Here's my version of the taxonomy:

By guiding pupils on how to progress from left to right, it is possible to elicit more sophisticated learning, where pupils are meta-cognitively more self-aware.

For example, Shakespeare... From the left, pupils are aware of facts about him, such as he worked as an actor, in Elizabethan London and wrote plays for the theater. Then ask the pupils how these relate to one another. Acting gave him insights into audience's responses, which fed back into his writing; or the verbal, as opposed to visual, culture of Elizabethan England meant sophisticated wordplay was valued, which fed back into his writing...

Then make links with literature more generally. The rich wordplay of his writing, as result of the links made earlier, together with his fame and influence have meant this has become a convention of sophisticated writing.

Using the taxonomy makes this kind of thinking much more explicit.