SOLO and Teenage Voice

So the proof of the pudding...
Commissions:
A national project – C21st UK - wishes to collect from young people writing which reflects life in the UK in the C21st. Your writing should focus on aspects of young people’s lives which you feel are important. You can choose the form of the writing e.g. journalism or narrative.












Not satisfied with the pressure of having to prove my new lesson plan works, I decided to have my PM observation on a Friday afternoon and also have my first observation using SOLO taxonomy... oh yeah... and it was videoed.
So, here is the plan (names of students have been changed):




The resources were:

Extracts from the books above (it is actually possible to find bits that are not too graphic!)
SPLIT the text worksheets (Structure, Patterns, Language, Imagery, Themes)
A student response
Venn diagram comparison thinking tool (each circle represents a text)
A1 sugar paper and felt-tip pens
SOLO display and post-it notes

Students showed their progression at the start, middle and end of the lesson by moving their post-it. I questioned target students (identified on the plan) about their choices and also students who felt they did not want to move. By the end of the lesson, it looked like this:




At the start no one had put themselves beyond multi-structural. An student absent from the previous lesson was able to show progression from pre-structural to extended abstract thinking!
And here is the feedback: