Exploring Depth: Engaging Students in Deep Thinking With and Beyond the Icons

Depth is an essential instructional concept when supporting advanced learners in heterogeneous classrooms. The word is commonly used in education but is rarely defined. To engage students in deep thinking, we argue that teachers must first define the term “depth” for themselves and discern the nuance between its meaning and other popular terms like complexity and abstraction. With a working definition in hand, teachers can then use existing resources like Kaplan’s Depth and Complexity Icon Cards and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge model to evaluate their objectives, tasks, and assessments to make meaningful adjustments that provide in-depth learning experiences for all students and differentiated learning opportunities for advanced learners. Using an extended anecdote to guide our discussion, we explore definitions and frameworks for “depth,” provide guiding questions to encourage reflection among practitioners, and give practical examples of differentiation that add depth to the standard curriculum.