Depth and Complexity
Videos and tasks related to the Depth and Complexity Framework.
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let's get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
Depth and Complexity: 🌻 Details
Get kids focusing on the small, but essential, details of a topic.
Depth and Complexity: ⚖️ Ethics
Want to add drama to any topic? Use the Ethic prompt!
Student Introductions With Depth and Frames
Want to introduce the tools of Depth and Complexity and learn more about your students and introduce the Frame graphic organizer? Have I got the activity for you!
Upgrade Research Questions With Depth and Complexity
Ever ask students to create research questions? Were their ideas a bit… blah? My own students had a very hard time writing questions they didn't already know the answer to! This video is how I solved that problem: upgrade research questions with depth and complexity.
Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity
Your students will use Depth and Complexity to note how a character's main trait changes across a story.
Student Introductions with Complexity and Frames
Students will introduce themselves by showing how they've changed over time.
Depth and Complexity: 👄 Language of the Discipline
Imagine a construction worker who doesn't know the name of a screwdriver or a doctor who can't remember what to call your neck. It's pretty hard to communicate well without knowing the 👄 Language of the Discipline!
Generalization: Change Leads to More Change
Can you think of a time in your life when "Change lead to more change?"
Depth and Complexity: ❓ Unanswered Questions
This underutilized tool focuses students on what we don’t yet know and even what we can’t know.
Depth and Complexity: 🚦 Rules
Is there a consequence for not doing something? You may have found a rule!
Depth and Complexity: 👓 Multiple Perspectives
In this video, we introduce the 👓 Multiple Perspectives prompt of Depth and Complexity.
Depth and Complexity: 📈 Trends
Has something been changing recently? What might be causing that? What are the effects?
Depth and Complexity: Patterns
Can your students spot anything that repeats? Or that has stopped repeating?
Depth and Complexity: ⏳ Change Over Time
Want to get students thinking about how a topic has changed or might change in the future? The ⏳ Change Over Time thinking tool is just what you need!
Depth and Complexity: 📚 Across Disciplines
No topic is an island! With the 📚 Across Disciplines prompt, students note connections within and across multiple fields.
Generalization: Problems Lead to New Rules, Which Lead to New Problems
Students explore this generation about how problems lead to new rules, and new rules lead to new problems.
Generalization: Systems Are Made up of Other Systems
Students will explore how systems are often made up of smaller systems (and are usually a part of a larger system, too).
Generalization: Unseen power, visible effects.
Can you think of times when power is unseen, but we can clearly see its effects?
Introducing Universal Theme of Change
So what could you do with a Universal Theme of Change? Well, here's an introduction that will get your students' brains sweating.
Think Like An Historian
Here's how effects be causes and causes can be effects!
Making A Change with Depth and Complexity
Take your students further up Bloom's Taxonomy by asking them to make a change using one of the prompts of depth and complexity and then consider what the effects of that change would be.
Think Like A Philosopher
What would Socrates have thought if he watched Frozen?
Contrasting with Depth and Complexity
Once your students can identify the rules, language, or big ideas of a topic, we've got to move them up Bloom's Taxonomy! Let's start by contrasting with a related topic.
Content Imperatives: Paradox
How can one idea pull in opposite directions, being both true and false or right and wrong at the same time? It's time to explore Paradoxes!
Introducing Universal Theme of Conflict
So what could you do with a Universal Theme of Conflict? Well, here's an introduction that will get your students' brains sweating.
Introducing Universal Theme of Systems
So what could you do with a Universal Theme of Systems? Well, here's an introduction that will get your students' brains sweating.
Content Imperatives: Origin
Take students back to the beginning by using the Content Imperative ⏺️ Origin.
Introducing Universal Theme of Power
So what could you do with a Universal Theme of Power? Well, here's an introduction that will get your students' brains sweating.
Content Imperatives: Parallel
Get students thinking broadly by exploring similarities across multiple topics. Combine with Depth and Complexity for bonus points!
Generalization: Order Can Be Natural or Constructed
Students explore this generation about how order can be both natural and created by humans.
Content Imperatives: Convergence
Add complexity by considering how multiple factors 🔄 Converge within one topic.
Content Imperatives: Contribuition
Ask students to consider how a specific factor is affecting (or ⏬ Contributing) to a topic.
Think Like An Economist
How would an economist read Goldilocks? How would they see a rainforest? How would they study the American Revolution?
Think Like An Author: Hemingway vs Dickens
What if your students rewrote Dickens in the style of Hemingway and vice versa?