Pictures of Our Word Sorts

Here are some pictures of our word sorts to better explain what we are doing.

This is a three day process.  Day 1 I introduce the sort by calling small groups down to the carpet.  We read the words together, then I tell them the categories for sorting.  We sort some of the words as a group, then I send them back to their tables to sort independently.  In these pictures, we were sorting by long vowel sounds, so we had five categories.  Some of the students were finished in 5 minutes with 100% correct.  Others took more time and got confused, especially on the long u sound.  These students had a hard time distinguishing between sorting for the sound and looking at the spelling.  For example, they wanted to put the word "pool" with the words, "sold, and hold" because those words had the letters o and l.  Pool should have actually gone with the long u group because long u says it's name like in mute, but also says /oo/ like in school.

Day 2 we sort independently again and then record our words in the correct categories in our word study journals.  I also encourage the kids to think of other words to go in these categories that were not in our sort.  Surprisingly, the kids were really motivated and most wrote more than the required amount in their journals.  Understanding of the sorts seem to be a lot more consistent on this day as well.  I think repetition is the key.

On Day 3, we will get with a partner and have a blind sort.  This is when one partner reads the word and the other partner has to indicate which category it will go it without looking at the word.  We may also choose to sort our words in a different way on this day as well.