17th August 2012 13:30
By Blue Tutors
SOLO Taxonomy - can private tutors use such a system?
SOLO is a way of classifying understanding in a student. As a way of teaching it also allows students to classify their own level of understanding. In a planned SOLO lesson students select their own start level and then move on when they have classified their own understanding as ready to go progress to the next level.
It has 5 levels of understanding:
Prestructural - the student misses the point and needs help to start the task.
Unistructural - the student picks up on a few aspects of the task.
Multistructural - they know several aspects but these are unrelated.
Relational - facts can be integrated, compared, contrasted, analysed.
Extended Abstract - they can evaluate, theorise, predict, create, reflect.
Studies have shown that when students are made aware of these categories of understanding they can place themselves appropriately and move on only when they have gained a proper understanding of the task at their selected level. In this way students of different abilities can be motivated and challenged in a single classroom. But this could work for personal tuition too. Presented with different learning tasks a student can approach the task with which they feel most comfortable. For example:
Prestructural analysis of a poem will involve the tutor having to explain what is required by the question and provide help to get the student on their way.
Unistructural - they will start off on their own and identify certain aspects of importance.
Multistructural - they’ll identify more aspects but not relate these to each other or meaning.
Relational - aspects will be related to meaning & contextual information integrated.
Extended Abstract - theories about why and how aspects work in the poem and why and how the poet chose to use such features.
By allowing the student knowledge of these different levels of understanding a tutor can enable them to see their own way forward. While not all children may reach stage 5, all children will progress and will be able to rate their own understanding of a subject appropriately.
Come September, I am certainly going to give it a go.