Professional Development

Videos designed for teachers rather than students.

Depth and Complexity – An Introduction for Teachers

Depth and Complexity is a powerful, but often misunderstood, framework for teaching students to think more like experts.

For Teachers

Writing Differentiated Lesson Objectives

My early lessons didn't even have objectives, let alone good objectives! Here's how to build four-part, differentiated lesson objectives.

For Teachers

Differentiate with Low Floors and High Ceilings

Start with high expectations and scaffold down.

For Teachers

Asking Questions That Make Students Think

Part 1 of Better Questions

How can we ask questions that make students think rather than just remember?

Difficult vs Complex Tasks

What separates difficulty from complexity? And why do complex tasks lead to much more natural differentiation?

For Teachers

Creating Sequences of Questions

Part 2 of Better Questions

Research has been surprisingly unclear about whether high-level questions are actually effective. Wait. What? The key is that high-level questions on their own aren't enough. We must create sequences of questions!

Why I Don’t Use “Create”

Why I don't use the word "Create" when writing objectives.

For Teachers

Why “Challenging” May Not Be The Right Goal

So many of us say, "I want to challenge my students!" But, that's probably not the best place to start.

For Teachers

Improving Wait Time

Part 4 of Better Questions

How much time do students get to think? How much time do students need to think? How can we bring those into alignment?

Lesson Makeover Event – Keynote

After looking at dozens of lessons folks sent in, I came up with three big ideas to address.

For Teachers

New Uses for Everyday Things

Here's how Joelle Trayers gets even her youngest students ready to think in unexpected ways.

For Teachers

Universal Themes

Universal Themes are an easy way to connect lessons, units, and content areas, even going across grade levels, and into students' personal interests.

For Teachers

Inductively Analyze Website Reliability

Rather than giving students rules to apply to websites, let them analyze websites to create rules.

For Teachers

Response to Lit: An Inductive Approach

For Teachers

Climbing Blooms with Depth and Complexity

Combine higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy with the prompts of Depth and Complexity!

For Teachers

An Inductive Exploration Of Geometry

With inductive thinking, students will work from parts to whole, discovering big ideas along the way!

For Teachers

Analyzing Conflict with the Content Imperatives

How to go deep into conflict using the Content Imperatives.

For Teachers

Multipotentiality: Excellent at Many Things

Why being good at many things can be a bit of a burden.

For Teachers

Teaching Criticism

Ask students to go beyond "I don't like it" and form critical opinions based on a set of criteria. Students can produce written arguments or turn their opinion into oral presentations.

For Teachers

Building Creative Confidence with the Torrance Tests

Here are a bunch of ways to quickly practice creativity with your students for zero dollars.

For Teachers

Students and Personality Types

How can our students be so different? And how can we help them to understand themselves and each other better.

For Teachers

Running A Group Investigation Lesson

Part 4 of Models of Instruction

Learn to lead a lesson that is built entirely on student curiosity.

For Teachers

Curriculum Compacting

Complex Task: Academic Tournaments

Who would win in the Tournament of Most Honorable Presidents or Least Useful Geometric Shapes or Bravest Shakespearean Characters? Create an academic tournament and watch your students' brains sweat!

For Teachers

Curriculum Acceleration: Step by Step

For Teachers

Developing Questions that Prompt Thinking in Math

Part 3 of Better Questions

Math is a particularly tricky subject for asking higher-level questions. Here are a couple of techniques I've used to prompt students to think, not merely calculate.

For Teachers

Writing Concept Attainment Lessons

Part 2 of Models of Instruction

In a Concept Attainment lesson, we give students examples and non-examples of a concept -- without telling them what that concept is!

For Teachers

Content Imperatives

Learn to use the Content Imperatives, a set of five additional tools that work with Depth and Complexity.

For Teachers

Introduction to Puzzlements

The thinking behind my weekly Puzzlements mailer.

For Teachers

Brain Needs or Heart Needs

We think of gifted kids as only having academic needs, but - in their own words - they also have many needs of the heart.

For Teachers

Unexpected Intensities

Do you know a student who's a little bit… intense?

Building “Not Like The Others” Tasks

A delightfully ambiguous framework that is quick to prepare, but can last forever!

Complex Task: Subjective Graphs

What would it be like if students graphed characters from stories? Historic leaders? Elements from the period table? Objects in space?

For Teachers

The Curse of Knowledge and Checking for Understanding

How knowing your material well easily becomes a curse… and what to do about it!

For Teachers

Creativity Beyond The Fluff

Just because a task is "creative" doesn't mean students are at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy.

For Teachers

Explain Concepts with the Frayer Model

Giving a definition just doesn't cut it! Use the Frayer Model to explain (and assess!) vocabulary.

For Teachers

Who Asks The Questions? And Who Answers?

Part 5 of Better Questions

What would the pie chart look like for these three situations: the teacher asks the students, a student asks the teacher, or a student asks another student a question? I can tell you my pie chart would have been very lopsided.

For Teachers

Addressing Disorganization

Know any kids who, despite their brilliant minds, have a bit of a hard time keeping things in order, turning things in on time, or remembering to put their names on their papers?

For Teachers

My Top 5 Depth and Complexity Mistakes

I spent about a decade making some pretty major mistakes in my use of depth and complexity.

For Teachers

Introduction to Differentiation

When differentiating, most teachers simply start in the wrong place!

Complex Task: What Would X Think of Y?

Here's a simple task that will add complexity to any content from any grade level!

For Teachers

Asynchrony

In some areas, a student may be shockingly advanced, while in others… surprisingly average. This is asynchrony in action.

For Teachers

Making Depth and Complexity Posters

Why buy premade posters when you can show off your students' thinking about Depth and Complexity?

For Teachers

Running A “Notice, Wonder” Lesson

Part 7 of Better Questions

Use these puzzling images to build a classroom culture that is comfortable with curiosity, ambiguity, and taking intellectual risks.

For Teachers

Meeting Gifted Students’ Social and Emotional Needs

How can you tell if your students' social-emotional needs are being met on your campus?

For Teachers

Depth and Complexity and Graphic Organizers

Let's see a few examples of how Depth and Complexity slides nicely into any graphic organizer.

Thinking Deeply About Famous Structures

Rather than just learning about one structure, let's climb Bloom's and think more deeply.

Start High, Scaffold Down

A high level of thinking also requires the support of thoughtful scaffolding.

For Teachers

Exposing Students to Classics

Some kids are exposed to a wide range of classic art, music, and films at home and others aren't. Let's even the playing field by quickly integrating classics into our lessons.