SOLO Taxonomy and Gangnam Style - A match made in heaven?

How many baths does it take to fill a swimming pool?

So here is my powerpoint showing my introduction to SOLO taxonomy for my year 8 and 9. The task at the end was "How many baths fill a swimming pool?". A completely open question with many possible answers.


Some of the students hated the fact that "there isn't an answer!" Some of them appeared set free in their thinking and went off on some bizarre tangents.

I have included a gallery of some of the produced work, just press the link at the end! There are some interesting ideas if you look closely at what has been done and some not so good ones too!

The aim of this was to see if they can begin to get an idea of the level of thinking they are putting into their work. I feel this has been a success but, as is the case with many things, it is important to reinforce this idea of SOLO with the students and how it can be applied to their maths. I will be teaching a lot of the Year 9s again next year so this should be easy to carry on, though may seem a little strange to those that join our group!

As a follow up task for Year 8 (and Year if we have time) I stole a question from a TV show....

Imagine you have a set of dominoes that gets increasingly bigger, how many would you need to knock down a house?

Once again an open ended question ready to be ripped apart. They are working in pairs as a maximum and have been told to include some maths in this one. Some were asking about momentum, some about acceleration due to gravity, the densities of different materials etc etc. Some brilliant questions. I can't wait to see their solutions which can be in any form such as powerpoints, posters, essays, videos as long as they come up with an answer.

I really hope they are starting to see where maths can be used and applied to solve some problems that are not in a textbook.

Link to the gallery of posters produced