What are depth and Complexity icons?

The Depth and Complexity Icons are visual prompts designed to help students go beyond surface level understanding of a concept and enhance their ability to think critically. These critical thinking tools help students dig deeper into a concept (depth) and understand that concept with greater complexity.

How many depth and Complexity icons are there?

eleven icons
What are the Icons of Depth and Complexity? The most recognizable part of the Depth and Complexity framework is the set of eleven icons that represent the eleven thinking prompts. The eleven elements are divided into two types: depth and complexity.

What is Complexity in gifted education?

Original post (edited): Depth is the “language of the discipline, big ideas, essential details, rules, patterns, trends, unanswered questions, and ethics.” Complexity involves “change over time, multiple points of view, across the disciplines.” Depth and complexity in gifted education should be a natural extension of …

What is ethics in depth and Complexity?

In this section, we introduce my personal favorite tool of depth and complexity: Ethics. This prompt draws students’ attention to the good and bad within a topic. Multiple Perspectives asks students to consider how another person would think about a topic.

What does over time mean in depth and Complexity?

The Depth and Complexity thinking tool ⏳ Change Over Time does exactly what it sounds like: gets students looking at a topic across multiple time periods. It’s easy to “use” Depth and Complexity and yet have low-level thinking at the same time.

How do you explain depth and complexity?

The goal of Depth is to help students to expand their knowledge and expertise while maintaining a balance with the academic content. The goal of Complexity is to challenge students to make connections across disciplines, both over time and between disciplines.

What does depth and complexity mean?

Broadly speaking, expert knowledge can be categorized in two ways – depth: deep understanding of the content of the field; and complexity: scholarly insights into the connections across time, people and disciplines.

Why do we use depth and Complexity?

What are the depth and complexity icons for?

The Depth and Complexity icons are tools that will take students of any age deeper into a study of any content area. Each of the eleven prompts acts as a different lens, prompting students to look at a topic in a new way. They will help you to take your advanced students deeper into grade-level material rather than moving them onto a new topic.

Is the depth and complexity prompt too high for students?

It sets the bar too high. Instead, draw the icons by hand as you teach and encourage students to do the same. The Depth and Complexity prompts are ultimately students’ tools and students should use their tools whether or not they have access to specific clip art.

What does depth and complexity mean in literature?

This element of Depth and Complexity represents moral principles (possible rights or wrongs). An easy way to remember the meaning: “Black and white/ right and wrong”. It represents conflicting points of view on events, ideas or issues and involves bias, values, or judgments.

How can I encourage students to explore the complexity of learning?

For a different approach, consider having students explore why things haven’t changed. This icon also falls under the complexity section of the framework. The Across Disciplines icon prompts exploration of connections within, between and across subject areas.