This framework for differentiation will give your students practical ways to think more deeply about a topic.
The dimensions of depth and complexity are a great first step towards a classroom differentiated for gifted learners. Learn the basics of these thinking tools and begin incorporating them into your lessons tomorrow!
While the official depth and complexity icons look great, they lead to all kinds of problems in the digital world and also take ownership away from students. Emoji are an elegant solution to both problems.
You can use the prompts of depth and complexity yet still ask very shallow questions. Here's how to avoid this common pitfall…
What if we used a universal theme to guide our study of fractions? These very big ideas get students thinking about fractions in a new way.
Let’s start with a puzzlement, ask kids to generate an abstract statement, and then find evidence that their statement works across several different areas.
Here are a few ways that you can introduce the prompts of Depth and Complexity to a range of students (yes, even kindergartners!).
Why I let students make their own depth and complexity posters rather than buying and displaying professional printable posters.
How one might revamp a “Wax Museum” project into something that focuses more on thinking than product.
Go across disciplines by asking students to write a story about fraction equivalence.
Frames, a graphic organizer often used with the Depth and Complexity framework, have one big trap that I fell into for years.
The Across Disciplines prompt asks students to think about how this topic intersects with other fields as well as with other topics within the same field.
It’s quite easy to “use” Depth and Complexity and yet have low-level thinking at the same time. Here’s why it’s so important to make sure that our use of Depth and Complexity is truly changing students’ thinking.
By far, ❓Unanswered Questions was the prompt that I under-utilized with my own class. Now I see it in a whole new light, and boy is there immense power in prompting students to note and explore truly unanswered questions.
Language of the Discipline is more than just slapping an icon next to an existing spelling list. It’s about digging into the words, phrases, symbols, and acronyms that an expert uses to discuss their field efficiently.
In this section, we introduce two more prompts of depth and complexity: ⚖️ ethics and 👓 multiple perspectives.
In this section, we’ll learn about two more prompts of Depth and Complexity that pair beautifully: Rules and Patterns. Because they share some similarities, I like to introduce them together and lean heavily on what makes Rules and Patterns different.
When introducing the prompts of Depth and Complexity, I like to begin with Big Idea and Details. Here are some ways you could get started with these two thinking tools.
The Ethics prompt of depth and complexity fits so easily into the humanities… but what about ethics in math?!
Big Idea is often the first prompt of Depth and Complexity that I introduce to students. That does not mean, however, that it is basic or less sophisticated than the other prompts.
Here’s the most common mistake I’ve seen in implementing depth and complexity: the “fill in the blanks” worksheet.
Last month, I asked which prompt of Depth and Complexity you’d get rid of. The results were pretty unanimous…
Understanding how to move students from abstract to specific and back again is a key to differentiating for the gifted. Reading through a pal’s dissertation gave me a new way of applying this to Depth and Complexity…
Layer the prompts of Depth and Complexity onto any graphic organizer to increase the level of thinking required of your students.
I love the prompts of depth and complexity and the content imperatives. But some teachers are being asked to use eight new prompts that just aren’t as good as the classics.
It’s essential to teach our students to think flexibly and consider multiple points of view. Flexible thinking leads to product innovation, diplomacy between nations, and advances in science. School, however, often encourages students to settle into a “one right answer” mindset.
Here are three visual resources to discuss change over time, compare and contrast, and multiple persepctives: beauty tips from 1889, company logos over time, and 1950s 7up ads featuring babies.
Up near the top of Bloom’s taxonomy is “evaluating.” A great use of this level of thinking is to evaluate a character’s ethical choice. But we can go deeper! Let’s ask students to evaluate characters’ actions based on another character’s point of view. To add another layer, we’ll teach kids about philosophers and use their points of view as well.
At our school, 6th graders participate in an annual egg drop. To increase the rigor, I looked for unique scientific roles and came up with three: designing a parachute to slow the egg’s descent, testing materials to pack inside the structure, and developing the structure itself. Each of these roles will be developed into a scientific discipline.