Students sort and categorize pictures words and objects across the curriculum and from the very start of Kindergarten. This year’s KTL training gave me a deeper understanding of how learning to organizing words and discussing the connections between and among a group of words is the beginning of implied main idea. When a child can articulate the connection within a group of details they begin the process of finding the main idea.
In this activity, we asked a second-grade group of students with experience in categorizing words into previously labeled buckets, (labels) to sort then identify the labels for the buckets. The discussion groups got right to work sorting and determining how to organize the words. At first glance kids impulsively sorted into two clear categories, winter and summer then hit a roadblock with nouns that were places, like TD Garden and Fenway Park.
Eventually, paired groups brought their category labels to the rug where our larger debate happened. The final two labels given were Bruins hockey essentials and Red Sox Baseball essentials. This was engaging and only took about 15 minutes.
