Going SOLO – Part 1

My Pedagoo Resolution is to introduce SOLO taxonomy to my classes. SOLO is something I’ve been hearing a lot about this past year, but is not something I’ve found the time to do much with… so it is a perfect candidate for a resolution. I’ve heard too many people I respect saying it works, and like most people who are involved with Pedagoo, I’m interested in being a better teacher, so, here goes!

My intention is to ‘think out loud’ the whole process from finding out more about SOLO, adapting lessons, implementing it, and reflecting on how it goes in my classroom, with the intention of finishing up by reviewing the impact on my learners… with them getting the last word as I’ll be asking them to reflect on and comment on what they think they’ve improved on. But that is some way down the line, first, I want to get my head around what SOLO actually is and what it involves. [1]

What is SOLO?

SOLO is the acronym for Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes. It is a method/skillset for encouraging learners to become more reflective and involved in the learning process. It highlights 5 ‘stages’ of understanding and these lie at the heart of SOLO. They are:

• Prestructural
• Unistructural
• Multistructural
• Relational
• Extended Abstract

I was going to go into a great big long explanation of these, but instead, will point you at the video that I found most useful when getting to grips with the basic concepts. It’s the (always excellent) David Didau explaining SOLO at a TeachMeet:

So (and apologies for my very simplistic approach):

• Prestructural = lack of knowledge
• Unistructural = knowing one thing
• Multistructural = knowing several things
• Relational = being able to identify relationships between the known things
• Extended Abstract = the ability to hypothesise based on the previous levels…

If I relate this to my own SOLO journey, I have gone from knowing nothing about SOLO a year or so ago (Prestructural), to hearing it mentioned on Twitter as a good thing (Unistructural), to learning more about it from David, Lisa, Tait (Multistructural), getting to grips with it by making connections between different blogs and research on it (Relational), to finally beginning to design some lessons that will use SOLO as part of their planning and delivery (Extended Abstract). This may not make perfect sense, but I’m fairly happy that I have learned enough to start thinking about implementing it in class.

Next up, will be a short attempt by me to devise a revision lesson on An Inspector Calls using SOLO approaches. My S3 class need to get up to speed on it quite quickly in preparation for writing a critical essay on the play in the next week or so. Until then, I highly recommend you follow the embedded links above, and if you have any questions, please post them in the comments… and if you have already been using SOLO, I’d really appreciate any thoughts and hints you care to share!

1. I should point out that everything I write here is drawn from a number of excellent people who have generously and kindly made their own thoughts and advice available in their own spaces. In general, I’ll link to them in the body of the text… all errors are mine, not theirs!

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