Let’s just look at a typical 👄 Language of the Discipline question on my old Depth and Complexity worksheets.
Define these terms in your own words: Union, Confederacy, abolition, secession, emancipation, and blockade.
So I was just stopping at “define the words.” That’s a BOB task (Bottom of Blooms). It’s an okay place to start, but gosh I don’t want to stop there! And you certainly don’t need Depth and Complexity to merely ask students to write a definition! That’s neither Deep nor Complex!
What’s Next?
Once a student can tell me what “abolition” or “secession” means, what do they do? Well, they’d come up and say, “I’m done, Mr. Byrd. What do I do now?” And I’d have nothing for them because I didn’t really plan past Step 1. (I wrote more about the early finisher problem here.)
So, once a student can define the words, let’s do something with them! Let’s build a sequence of questions that climb Bloom’s and move to new D&C prompts. (more about building Depth and Complexity sequences here).
Now, you can’t go deep in six different directions. So I’m going to zoom in. I’ll pick one word and build on it.
I was drawn to “secession.” I thought that this term is an example of a larger idea: 🏛️ parts breaking away from wholes. I begin by asking students to think of other examples of a part breaking away from wholes.
A Sequence about “Secession”
Step 1 First, let’s think about other examples of a part breaking away from a whole (or attempting to break away).
So, class, we have the US Civil War and The American Revolution as examples of a part breaking away (or trying to break away) from a whole. And your fearless teacher once left his parents’ home and started his own family. Can we think of other examples where a part broke away and tried to become its own whole?
We’ll get lots of examples here. And we’ll immediately (and naturally) go 📚 Across Disciplines. Students might think of:
- seeds leaving a plant
- a worm splitting in two
- Beyonce leaving Destiny’s Child
Your students will come up with things you’d never think of. This is so fun. But don’t be afraid of silence! Students need silence to think!! Let it be awkward. Let the silence last for 60 seconds. (I wrote more about how awful I was at wait time here)
Step 2 Once we have at least 15 examples of “secession,” we’ll move to the next step: categorizing our examples. Note that we are both climbing Bloom’s Taxonomy AND shifting to a new prompt of Depth and Complexity. We’re moving from 🌼 Examples to 🌀 Patterns.
Class, this list is incredible. Now, our job is to form categories of these examples. What are two examples on our list that we might partner up. It could be for any reason.
Students might group “US Civil War” and “Andrew Ridgeley leaving Wham!” because they are failed secessions. They might put “starfish loses arm” and “seed falls from tree” together since they are from nature. You cannot predict what connections students make!
Step 3: Once my class gets the idea, I’ll spin students off into trios to complete the groupings. We want as many of the items put into 3-5 categories. I expect each trio of students to create totally different categories.
Wow, what a variety of category ideas! Our next step is to write a statement about parts leaving their wholes. You can use your category names to create this statement. Using my categories, I might write “When parts leave wholes, it can be peaceful, violent, or neutral.”
Eventually, each group will write their own 🏛️ Big Idea statement based on their categories. Students might tell me things like:
- “When parts leave their whole with permission, the new whole is usually more successful.”
- “When a part leaves its whole, it leads to new ideas and innovation.”
- “When parts leave their whole abruptly, it can cause chaos.”
NICE!
The Power of a Sequence
Let’s go back and look at my original task:
😬 Define these terms in your own words.
That was where I stopped!