Compacting and Cubing

Compacting: This strategy was developed by Joe Renzulli at the University of Connecticut and is designed to help advanced learners maximize use of their time learning (Rezis & Renzulli, 1992). Compacting is a three-stage process.

In Stage 1 teachers pre-assess students and identify areas where students may be candidates for compacting. If students know 70-75% of the content in advance, it allows teachers and students to buy time back which would have been spent on whole-class activities/instruction.

In Stage 2, the teacher notes which skills the student didn’t demonstrate mastery in and creates a plan to address those areas. Plans to do that may range from having the student join the whole class or a small group to creating a product that demonstrates mastery.

In Stage 3, teachers and students collaborate to design an investigation or study for the student to engage in while other students are working on the general lessons. Projects should include timelines, procedures for completing tasks, criteria for evaluation, and any other necessary elements. Overall, students who compact benefit from an appropriate level of challenge, and teachers also benefit by redistributing the learning population and reducing teacher-to-student ratios for whole group instruction.

Cubing: Teachers can use cubing in a variety of ways once students are familiar with this approach to exploring a topic, issue, or idea. Teachers can structure student interaction with the cubes by creating cubes in advance with differing levels of difficulty. Teachers can modify cubes according to student interest so that groups of students interact with different cubes representing different topics. Teachers can also have students create their own cubes for themselves or others. This strategy can be widely applied to concepts in almost every setting K-12.

The Six Sides of the Cube (D-C-A-A-A-A):

  1. Describe it (including color, shape, size (if applicable)—How would you describe the issue/topic?
  2. Compare it (what it is similar to or different from)—“It’s sort of like”
  3. Associate it (what it makes you think of)—How does the topic connect to other issues/subjects?
  4. Analyze it (tell how it is made or what it is composed of)—How would you break the problem/issue into smaller parts?
  5. Apply it (tell how it can be used)—How does it help you understand other
    6. topics/issues?
  6. Argue for/against it (take a stand and support it)—I am for this because/This works because/I agree because 

(Adapted from Tomlinson, 2001, pp. 74-75)