The Todd Cast - Teaching Theory into Teaching Practice

Trends (Depth and Complexity icon) - trends are patterns that take place over a period of time. This period of time could be a month, could be a year, could be several years. By observing the patterns in this trend, we can try and predict where the trend will go next. By doing this you can take advantage of fortunate trends while avoiding negative ones.

Multiple Perspectives (Depth and Complexity icon) - It is often said that there are two sides to every story. In reality, there are as many sides to the story as there were people present. Yet the story is usually only told from one of these perspectives. If we are going to truly understand something, we have to consider more than our own perspective. Understanding another perspective doesn't mean...

Unanswered Questions (Depth and Complexity icon) - Often in school, students are presented with questions that they are expected to find a correct answer to. This could be a math problem, how to spell a word, the name of a figure, event, or date in history, or how sounds waves work. In life however, sometimes there is no easy answer, and there are even times when there is no answer. How do we cope...

Ethics (Depth and Complexity icon) - ethics are the gray areas we encounter when looking at a situation. For example, it is wrong to shout in the classroom. In fact, it is a rule. But what if someone injured themselves and you needed to yell for help? Wouldn't that make you action justified? A great way to learn about ethics is for students to take part in debates where they are arguing for or aga...

Rules (Depth and Complexity icon) - rules are fairly simple aren't they? You either can do something or you can't. And if you break a rule, there are consequences or punishments that might follow. But it is not that simple. There are different rules that apply to different situations differently. There is the severity of the rule that was broken as well as the consequence for doing so. And then th...

Big Idea (Depth and Complexity icon) - what's the big idea? We often ask this question. The big idea is what you are supposed to get or be learning from something. These are sometimes called essential questions or learning objectives, but ultimately the big idea is what it all boils down to. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the book jacket of a novel. On this, the publisher has to include eno...

Patterns (Depth and Complexity icons) - in this video we will discuss how students can look for patterns in academics, in sports, and in their own lives in order to try and predict the most probable outcome. Sometimes these patterns can be obvious and easy to figure out, sometimes you need to look a little deeper to see the multi-layers of patterns occurring. Although not an exact science, recogni...

Details - the devil is in the details and this couldn't be more true. Details are what allow people to fully understand something and without them, something may get lost. This Depth and Complexity icon is all about getting students to explain themselves thoroughly so that whatever they are trying to communicate makes sense. These details are especially important when trying to teach someone somet...

Over Time - 1 of the 11 icons in the Depth and Complexity thinking framework, this is a complexity icon that takes a look at how things change (and sometimes do not) change over a given period of time. This might be an hour, it could be years, it could be centuries. Because it is such a complex idea to grasp, using as many concrete and specific examples as possible can help students to see how ove...

Language of the Discipline - 1 of the 11 icons in the Depth and Complexity thinking framework, Language of the Discipline means helping students to understand the context of the language being used. What might mean one thing in one discipline might change in another. For example, if I use the term add in math, students would then add numbers together. If I used add in ELA, it would mean students w...

Introduction to Depth and Complexity Framework - this is a learning platform developed at the California Department of Education that centers around 11 icons designed to push the thinking of students to the next level. The icons are broken down into 8 focusing on depth; patterns, trends, details, big idea, rules, unanswered questions, ethics, and language of the discipline. There are also 3 comple...

Student Choice - One way you can certainly challenge students in the classroom is to provide them with choices. This could be a choice in topics learned, choice in how this is learned, choice with who you learn it with, and choice in how you are going to determine mastery. By providing students with this choice is allows them to A) challenge themselves because they know their potential better than...

STEM Challenges - STEM is more than just putting science, technology, engineering, and math together, it is about using the engineering design process which is 1) Ask, 2) Imagine, 3) Plan, 4) Create, and 5) Improve. A good way to learn this process is to have students work on STEM design challenges. These can last 15 minutes, they can last a few days, they can take a month depending on how you set...

Projects vs. Project-Based Learning - sometimes we use these two terms interchangeably in education when there really is a large difference between them. This PD tutorial walks you through what the major difference are and what these look like in your classroom.

Pre-Assessment - this an excellent method for determining what a student does and does not know. Often times though, we use this information to close gaps and provide intervention, but how often do teachers use it to figure out ways to challenge students, especially our gifted ones? This Todd Talk takes you through formal, informal, and body of work pre-assessments and how they can be used to give...

Mentors/Mentorships - Even though teachers are expected to be the experts in their subject area, often times there are things that we don't know. This is especially true with gifted students who might come with a lot of prior understanding and need to be challenged at a level the teacher cannot provide. One strategy for overcoming this is using mentors/mentorships to provide students with access t...

Differentiated Centers - Learning centers are various stations set up around the classroom that gives students specific tasks or skills to work on independently. In a classroom with gifted students however, you must differentiate these centers so that there are different levels to the same station depending on what challenge the student needs. How do you set these up? What advantages is there to d...

Setting Up Independent Projects - when you have a student who already knows the material you are going to be covering, why make them sit through something they have already learned? Isn't there something they could be doing to go deeper into the learning and learn important skills as well? That is what allowing students to work on independent projects when they have pre-assessed out of a unit of s...

Enrichment Clubs - One way to enrich your students is simply by providing a place for them to enrich themselves. This can be accomplished with enrichment clubs. These can be held before or after school, or worked into the school day. It is important that you as the coordinator of this club do three things 1) pick something you yourself are passionate about 2) provide resources for students dependi...

Bonus Opportunities - these are just as the name implies; opportunities for students to stretch their thinking about something they are learning. This is not extra credit or bonus points, it is about expanding the learning of the student. It is important that these are opportunities where students choose to do them or not rather than assignments. It is also important that students are not extrinsi...

Choice Boards - When trying to enrich our students, one way to do this is to provide student choice. But how do you guide this choice into the lesson you are teaching? You can provide choice boards which are menus that students can choose various activities from. These choice boards can be subject-specific, they could be grade-level specific, they could be skill specific. Regardless, they need to...

Board Games that Enrich - You don't always have to be directly enriching students. Having resources in your room that enrich them without them even knowing is one way to provide opportunities for learning. An example would be having board games students have access to either during indoor recess, free time, or as a reward. This ToddCast provides tons of examples of games to use with different grad...

20time - this is a strategy that can be used with gifted students and high ability children where students are given time in school to work on projects that are generated by their own interests and passions. It is learning for learning sake. The basic idea is you come up with a wicked problem, something that is not easily solved if at all, and you try and create a project where you are helping oth...

Bulletin Board Enrichment - You can have simple in-class options on your bulletin boards for students to use in order to enrich themselves. Having a problem of the week on a bulletin board, providing brain teasers and trivia, having a book club to engage in once their complete their regular schoolwork is going to challenge students as well as enrich their learning. This Todd Talk seeks to answer t...

Grading the Process - We traditionally grade students at the end of learning, usually in a summative assessment designed to determine whether students have mastered what it is we wanted them to have learned. What if instead you could assess them when the actual learning takes place? Would that not be more meaningful? This ToddCast discusses how this can be done and some of the tools for doing so.