How To Introduce the Depth and Complexity Icons My biggest problem when implementing Depth and Complexity? I used them in a shallow and simple way!
Ask Sequences, Never One-Off Questions Beware one-off questions. Any question that we prepare should have a natural follow-up question. And those follow-ups should push students up Bloom’s Taxonomy.
A Tessellation Art (and Math) Project Let's create an MC Escher-style tessellation art (and math) project with nothing more than an index card, a marker, and paper.
Graphic Organizers Are Not Final Products Ending with a Venn Diagram is like comparing two vacation spots… but never actually going on the vacation!
Introducing Ourselves With Depth and Complexity and Frames A go-to activity to introduce the prompts of depth and complexity to students while they also introduce themselves to their new classmates.
Introducing Universal Themes and Generalizations Generalizations, big ideas, abstractions, universal themes... they are designed to help our gifted students learn. However, what I didn't realize was that they would help me teach!
Going Beyond “Define These Terms In Your Own Words” "Define these terms in your own words" may contain depth and complexity… but it's neither deep nor complex!
“Engagement” isn’t BAD, but… "Engagement" is a nice by-product of a well-designed lesson, but it sure isn't our actual goal as educators.
Paradox: Ship of Theseus Here's a fun thought experiment your students are sure to get a kick out of: when something is slowly replaced over time, is it still the same thing in the end?
Focus on Thinking, Not the Product When I was a new teacher, you would have seen some pretty fancy products hanging in my room, but if you stopped to consider how my kids thought about the content... well, often my students just restated facts that I had already told them.
