Deepening Thick Slides with DOKs

I have posted about Thick Slides before – read about it here. This time I’m back with some ways to add various DOK 1, DOK 2, and DOK 3 levels to Thick Slides. If you are unfamiliar with a Thick Slide, it’s a fan favorite in the EduProtocol world.

The Thick Slide is simple – it’s a deconstructed paragraph that includes the following:

1. A title
2. One or two images with captions
3. 4 to 5 facts
4. A quote (this could also be whatever you want it to be such as writing a claim, sharing a number, etc.
5. Comparing or defining content words.

All of these things can be done on a Google Slide, Powerpoint, Canva, or on paper. The options with a Thick Slide are endless. It can be used as a formative assessment summary piece or as a summative assessment piece.

Formative Assessment

Last week I designed a lesson on the Electoral College. When students came into the room, I had a Thin Slide prompt on the board: “Two people ran for president – Candidate 1 got 66 million votes for president. Candidate 2 got 63 million votes. Who should win the election and why?” Students were surprised when I revealed the winner was Donald Trump who received 3 million less votes in 2016. Next, I had students make predictions about the Electoral College before we read an article. After reading the article, students designed a Thick Slide as a summary of what they just read. On the slide I included:

1. Give it a title (DOK 0.5 maybe)
2. Share 2 facts about the Electoral College (DOK 1)
3. Why did the delegates fear people directly vote for the president? (DOK 1)
4. Compare the Founding Fathers’ fears of having one president versus three. (DOK 2)
5. Include a picture and caption related to the Electoral College. (DOK 0.5)
6. What do you see as the most convincing argument for keeping or getting rid of the Electoral College system as established in the Constitution? Defend your view. (DOK 3)

Summative Assessment

I used the Thick Slide as a summative assessment to end the causes of the American Revolution unit. I did this because I was out of town and wanted to leave something familiar. When I finished putting the Thick Slide together, I was ready to share it, but then I stopped. I wanted more out of it since it was a summative assessment. I thought about a bit more and came up with this…

1. Add a title (DOK 0.5)
2. Identify and describe 2 british acts or taxes. (DOK 1-2) Rank them from most to least offensive to the colonists. Explain why. (DOK 3)
3. Insert a picture that shows one important reason the colonists wanted independence from Britain. In the caption, tell why you picked that picture and how it connects to the colonists’ reasons for rebellion.(DOK 3)
4. Compare the Sons of Liberty to Loyalists. (DOK 2)
5. “Find a quote from the Declaration of Independence that shows an influence from John Locke and the Enlightenment.” (DOK 2-3)

For a summative assessment, it needed more depth with the DOK levels. This is why I love Thick Slides – they can be whatever you want them to be.

DOK Ideas for Thick Slides

DOK 1 (Recall of Information):

• Basic facts about a historic event or scientific concept
• Vocabulary definitions
• Formula/equation used in a process
• Sequence of steps in a procedure
• Key dates or timeline of events
• Descriptive elements of a literary work/character

DOK 2 (Application & Analysis):

• Explain the significance of a quote from a speech/text
• Compare perspectives of different eyewitnesses to an event
• Identify patterns/relationships within a dataset
• Categorize types of poetic devices used in a poem
• Concept map/flow chart of a process or system
• Classify or categorize the elements and details within an image (e.g. group literary devices used in a poem illustration)
• Explain how an image connects to thematic or symbolic concepts from a text
• Label important parts of an image and describe their significance
• Outline the sequence of events shown in a historical photograph/artwork
• Relate the perspective or tone within a quote to a character’s motivations and actions
• Compare and contrast interpretations of meaning from multiple quotes
• Apply the context or insights from a quote to another situation as an example

DOK 3 (Strategic Thinking):

• Develop an alternative solution to a complex problem
• Critique an author’s argument in a controversial editorial
• Design a model to predict future outcomes based on variables
• Support/dispute the ethics of a political/scientific decision
• Analyze impact of setting on a character’s development
• Find or create their own image that is a visual metaphor for a concept, theme, or abstract idea from the content
• Annotate areas of an image to explain deeper analysis
• Find a quote and analyze its connection to (or disconnection from) the topic, explaining their reasoning
• Critique or dispute the interpretation/reasoning within a quote
• Connect insights from quote to a real-world scenario or example