Friday marked my first Professional Development course as a BT in the MDTA. All I can say was WOW! Pam Hook took us on an interesting learning journey through SOLO Taxonomy. With Pam's analogies, simple explanations and wicked sense of humour I was hooked the entire time! It was great that we took part in hands-on activities as it allowed us to see how we can use SOLO in our lessons. Using SOLO will help our learners make deeper connections to their learning.
SOLO is an extremely useful taxonomy to implement in Learning Space Two as it scaffolds learners from thinking at a surface level to a deeper level. This is what Pam calls 'constructive alignment'. Another benefit to SOLO is that it does not label our learners, as the focus is on the learning outcomes and objectives, rather than the students themselves. Thus children's mindset of learning will shift from a 'fixed' mindset, to 'I can achieve when I combine strategy, effort and persistence'.
Robyn and I had a fabulous time with Pam Hook and have already planned to use some of her ideas next week.
Thanks Chelsea - it was a lot of fun working at Tamaki College with the Maniakalani Cluster schools - let me know how you get on with introducing the model to your students. Pam
ReplyDeleteI really hope every PD I go to is as interesting and fun as yours Pam! On our first day back at school Robyn & I used the hexagons after the students had learnt about the Treaty of Waitangi. It was really cool to hear the students working together to figure out connections between the hexagons.
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