I have been thinking about SOLO differentiated learning intentions, and all those other serial self-similar patterns of complexity in everyday life.
When you divide a fractal pattern into parts you get a nearly identical but reduced in size copy of the whole. Creating SOLO differentiated success criteria for SOLO coded tasks (aka learning intentions) is not a dissimilar process.
Which explains why, when I slice open broccoli I see SOLO differentiated learning intentions. And why, when I write learning intentions I find myself imagining broccoli.
The self-replicating fractal like connection with broccoli occurs because the SOLO level of the task and the SOLO level of the outcome can differ.
This is one of several reasons why I believe SOLO takes out Bloom’s Taxonomy as the most powerful model of learning to share with students when they are thinking metacognitively about what they are doing – how well it is going and what should they do next.
SOLO – the “one model to rule them all” – can be used by students to answer:
What am I doing? When students reflect on the nature of the task (learning intention) – they can code the task against different levels of SOLO by asking – is this a task that is designed to bring in one idea (SOLO Unistructural)? Bring in many ideas (SOLO Multistructural)? Connect ideas (SOLO Relational)? Or extend connected ideas in new ways (SOLO Extended abstract)? Tasks (learning intentions) can be differentiated against SOLO outcomes – in terms of the demand the task makes on working memory (capacity).
How well is it going? The outcome of a task can be at a different level of SOLO than the task itself. Putting this in edu_speak – the success criteria for any task can be differentiated for student outcomes at any level of SOLO. For example, a relational task requires students to connect ideas – students can complete this task at any level of SOLO – Prestructural (student makes no connection), Unistructural (student makes a connection), Multistructural (student makes several connections), Relational (student makes several connections and relates them), or Extended abstract (student makes several connections, relates these and looks at them in a new way).
What should I do next? Is easily determined – Strengthen understanding within the existing level or use the “plus one strategy” and attempt to move your understanding to meet the success criteria identified for the next level of SOLO.
Further reading:
For my take on using SOLO to share learning intentions, success criteria, student self-evaluation, feedup, feedback and feedforward click here
Image Attribution:
Broccoli inflorescence – via @Arti_choke
Broccoli sliced floret via sk8geek
