Rm 10

I will to continue to develop and improve my knowledge and understanding of SOLO taxonomy to develop the childrens questioning, processing and understanding skills in Inquiry Learning. This will be revisted regularly next term so that the children continue to improve their understanding of how the rubric works. I was very surprised that I had children at the relational stage for understanding and it will be interesting to see if these chn continue with the next inquiry or if it is related to that particular inquiry. Having the stages in child’s language helps the chn code where they are at so they understand where they fit on the rubric. I need to continue to improve and develop how I deliver the SOLO rubric to the chn so that their understanding of SOLO is extended as much as possible.

ULEARN09

"Striving Sevens" use SOLO

Recently my goal has been to further develop my own professional knowledge around the CSS inquiry rubric. I wanted to develop my own questioning skills and use strategies to assisst children to assess themselves against the rubric. I have found the inquiry solo rubric has given my teaching and children’s learning a lot more direction and ambition. It is so easy for children to code themselves and I find the more it becomes a natural part of classroom life and is refered to casually as well as officially the more children just naturally use the language. The children’s questions have improved simply by looking at the stages and what they need to do to achieve the next stage. Children now usually start a question with “explain why/how/what” because they know the answer they will receive will have more information in it. It has become a natural part of room 7 =)

Nic Mason's Solo Reflection

Truthfully, SOLO has been pretty hard and all-encompassing. But I guess that is the way all new things work until you get the hang of it. And true, it wasn’t until the end when the penny dropped for myself and the kids.

Another difficulty I found when taking on SOLO this term was that the 'Planning', 'Gathering' and 'Sorting' aspects of the rubric were hard to follow because we were trying a task-based inquiry; a bit separate from our traditional inquiry model. However, the end ‘Understanding and Evaluating’ parts still applied.

As a side project, I used the SOLO language and rubric to create a success rubric for writing. As a result, I am really pleased with how my writing program has turned out this term! The kids achieved fantastic results. My writing wall worked tumeke with examples of different SOLO parts E.g. This is what a multi-structural introduction looks like, etc. The SOLO success criteria was powerful when they self-assessed their work. They were truthful and hit the nail on the head. Very cool.

This will set my students up for the traditional inquiry approach next term. In conclusion, SOLO a GO-GO! It is choice.

Using SOLO (Room 5)

Inquiry Learning

Working with the SOLO rubric development group gave me a good insight and ownership of the changes.  I thought it was going to be really difficult to introduce the rubric to the children but by doing it at the appropriate stage it wasn’t such a major deal.  Quite a few children connected to it fairly easily and were able to place themselves where they thought they fitted.  I’m sure that putting the stages into child’s language definitely helped here and with each inquiry the children’s understanding of where they are and what they have to do to move to the next stage should improve.  I was pleasantly surprised to have some children working at the relational stage for understanding and look forward to see if this carries over in our next inquiry or if it is affected by the theme of the inquiry.

 

 

SOLO Reflections - Room 9

Reflective Journal

As part of my Inquiry Learning I have been introducing SOLO’s  Inquiry Rubric and the diferent levels from Prestrucural – Extended Abstract.  I have introduced these at the different stages of learning when appropriate.

Upon reflection of my activities I set up for the children’s learning I realise I need to ensure I provide a  variety of different activites so children do not all fit into the same stage of the rubric.  I still need to continue to work on improving my delivery of hands on activities to ensure children understanding is extended as much as possible.

Inquiry Learning in Room2

After our PD with Trevor Bond I started this terms inquiry by setting the class a task."We need to make the junior syndicate some toys to use during discovery time" I've found this really good not only for the students but for myself. Everyone knows exactly what we are trying to achieve and where we are going. Immediately after setting a task everyone was asking questions abut how we were going to do it, what we were going to make ect, even those who never, no matter how hard you try, ask a question. We also broke the task into three parts that we need to always keep in mind, that we need to make toys, they need to be something suitable to use during discoivery time and they need to be junior level toys. The next two weeks we have spent discovering how thing move with lots of hands on activities and experiments. I have only just introduce Solo's to my students and was very surprised with what year 2 and 3 students were really capable of. If we give our students even our juniors the chance to ask extended abstract questions or answer at an abstract level then they will. My class has understood the difference between the levels straight away and the symbols have made it really clear for them. One student has even made the link that on the xbox and playstation you can have multiplayer which is more than one player so that must mean multistructural is more than one question!! YAY. I was also surpirsed to see the students that I had just assumed would be able to ask at least one question couldnt and werent actually sure what the difference was between a question and a statement. it was a nice teaching moment to take those who were prestrucutal and ask them how can you change what you have said to become a quetion so that you are a unistructual questioner.
Not sure where to now exactly but we are all very excited to completing our task and taking action!!

Jenni Room 2