I haven’t written about the prompts of depth and complexity in a while, but they’re an incredible tool to begin differentiating learning objectives.
Teachers can quickly modify a lesson’s goal to increase the challenge by plugging in the depth and complexity prompts. But, I frequently see the prompts used at a mere surface level in classrooms.
Beyond Just Depth & Complexity
Sure, you can drop “patterns” into an objective to raise the level of the content, like so:
- Before: “Look for a character’s actions”
- After: “Look for the patterns in a character’s actions.”
Note, however, that the thinking skill is unchanged. Students are still “looking for.” On Bloom’s Taxonomy, that’s “identify” — a very low-order thinking skill. When we use depth and complexity we can’t neglect the thinking skill.
It’s Not Your Fault
If you suddenly realize that you’re using depth and complexity with a very low level of thinking, it’s not really your fault. Almost every example of Depth and Complexity you’ll find online uses the bottom of Bloom’s. Look at any of these charts, and you’ll note that each question begins with “what.”
Content vs Thinking
When planning a lesson, we have to not just differentiate content (which is what the prompts of depth and complexity do), but also adjust the thinking we expect students to do.
A Shakespeare play is content. And it seems like pretty advanced content — unless you’re doing very low-level thinking like “remember the main characters’ names in Romeo and Juliet.
Meanwhile, Dr. Seuss seems like low-level content, unless we’re asking students to: “Evaluate the ethical use of power in The Cat In The Hat and compare it to the use of power in Green Eggs and Ham. In which story is power used more dangerously?”
Here, despite the seemingly low level of initial content (Dr. Seuss), we’ve pumped up both the content (by making it about the ethical use of power) and the thinking (evaluate; compare and contrast) so that it’s actually a pretty interesting question even for older students.
When writing an objective, we must increase the complexity of not just the content, but also the thinking skill.
Climb The Taxonomy
Instead of just asking kids to “identify” over and over, climb Bloom’s Taxonomy in combination with a prompt of depth and complexity. Here’s an example:
- Look for patterns in a character’s actions.
- Compare the patterns in this character’s actions with another character’s.
- Judge the ethics of the patterns we see in this character’s actions.
- Create a new situation that would continue this pattern.
At each step, students are forced to think harder about the patterns they’ve uncovered. They’re no longer just “identifying.”
And notice how each step easily leads to a larger, more complex product.
At level one, a student could just write a sentence, but after that, the responses need to be bigger. Perhaps by the end, students are debating and creating skits.
An Interactive Version
Many years ago, I created The Differentiator, an interactive tool based on these ideas to help you modify the parts of a differentiated objective. Play around with it to see what a big difference the thinking skill can make!
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