SOLO taxonomy/Evaluative Writing

I had the opportunity to observe my colleague James Theobald, an English teacher, using SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcome) to develop his Year 10s' evaluative writing. I have been working with him in order to improve the quality of my Year 10 boys' review writing. I had 2 aims for our joint project, firstly to make sure the boys were actually reviewing their work and evaluating their products, not just describing what they had done. The second was to look in to SOLO and possibly implement it in some way.


SOLO

Image from Taitcoles

SOLO taxonomy is about (in basic terms) getting pupils from not knowing anything about a particular skill/task, to being able to identify key terms often used when carrying out the task and how they are used. It moves on to applying the skills learnt to a completely different scenario/topic. 
(Apologies for my poor explanation - I'm still trying to get to grips with it..)


Observation
James' lesson had SOLO stations. Each station was a different stage of SOLO and pupils had to decide which stage they were currently at. They had had 2 previous lessons on this and so were able to identify an example of each stage. Pupils decided when they were ready to progress to the next table. James could monitor progress by keeping an eye on pupils' movement around the room. (Ofsted tick!)


For the topic of evaluation, the stations started with what is evaluating then moved on to identifying evaluative terms and beginning to recognise connections between the terms used. Next it moved on to understanding how to evaluate and applying those skills by evaluating some thing. In James' case, he asked pupils to make something out of an arts and crafts kit then evaluate their creation. Pupils' knew they would be evaluating these and so some specifically tried to make the creations in a manner that was easy to evaluate.


My attempt
Having observed James, I feel confident enough to attempt a similar lesson with my Year 10 boys but would go through the stages as a whole class rather than using the stations. I think knowing that class, the boys would be too easily distracted and so would not necessarily move on on their own. The boys are really in to football (surprise, surprise) and so the Euros are a convenient topic to provide example reviews. James suggested finding a clip of something like MOTD where the commentators review the game rather than getting the boys to read an article. This would definitely suit them better. I am also planning to use previous years' reviews as these are on a slightly different topic and so can be useful without being something the boys can copy.


James and I also discussed the school's whole school literacy plan which is trying to ensure that departments are tackling literacy with a consistent approach. We talked about how many other subjects must do evaluative writing and just assume pupils are taught it in English and so expect them to just get on with it.