Depth & Complexity Icons:

Powerful Tools for Differentiating Instruction

The Depth and complexity icons consist of 11 pictures or icons, each with a corresponding title and concept. The icons are tools that can be used in many different ways to extend and elabortate curriculum, helping students to delve more deeply into a topic of study, while viewing content from multiple perspectives. They provide a means for students to develop and exhibit abstract thinking, and help students to make interdisciplinary connections. Using these icons and enriching your curriculum and instruction with depth and complexity facilitates student thinking and learning.

These icons are being successfully used in classrooms around the country and in all grades Kindergarten through hgih school. They can also be used in all content areas; teachers are enriching their curriculum and instruction in English Language Arts, History Social Studies, math, science, electives, even P.E.

USC Professor of Education Dr. Sandra N. Kaplan (www-rcf.usc.edu/~skaplan/) developed the Depth & Complexity Icons (as well as the Content Imperative icons) in the mid-1990s under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research & Improvement (OERI, www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/), Javits Curriculum Project T.W.O.

There are 8 depth icons and 3 complexity icons:

Depth Icons:

Language of the Discpline

Details

Big Idea

Unanswered Questions

Patterns

Rules

Trends

Ethics

Complexity Icons:

Relate Over Time

Multiple Perspectives

Across Disciplines

Here are a few resources for you to use in your classroom. And we welcome your contributions, too! If you have developed some great lessons, graphic organizers or other resources that use these icons, please send us the files (or a link to where you’ve posted them online) and we will happily add them to this list.

This is just a start—we’ll do our best to add many maore resources to this list, as well as annotations and proper citations, as soon as possible.

Resources for Our November 21, 2009 Workshop:

• K–5 Elementary Session: (Lyn Olson & Andrea Tracy)
  • PowerPoint Slideshows:
    • Introduction to the Depth and Complexity Icons, (Lyn Olson, PowerPoint slideshow)
    • .pdf of the PowerPoint slides, (Lyn Olson, 21 color pages, 848 KB )
    • .pdf of the PowerPoint, as 6-up handout format, (Lyn Olson, 4 B&W pages, 848 KB )
    • Depth and Complexity Icons and Content Imperatives, (Andrea Tracy, PowerPoint slideshow)
    • .pdf of the PowerPoint slides (Andrea Tracy)
    • .pdf of the PowerPoint, as 6-up handout format (Andrea Tracy)
  • Handouts:

Printable Resources – General:

• Understanding Depth and Complexity
• Facilitating Understanding Depth Complexity
• Icons Summary en español
• 1" round Icons labels (Avery #5247)
• Icons overview–Spanish & English
• Content Imperative Cards (a sample from JTaylor)

Examples of Classroom & Curriculum Applications:

• Native Americans cooperative groups activity (CA, 4th grade)

Online Resources:

• Depth & Complexity resoruces from Riverside (CA) Unified School District
• Adding Depth & Complexity, by Ian Byrd
• Three great icons resources from Arcadia (CA) Unified School District (.pdf and .ppt)
• David Chung, Valencia HS (CA) English teacher, has made many excellent teaching tools for English using the depth and complexity icons, including literature circles. (He also has a lovely photo album—he’s one talented fellow!)

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