Word Family Train Sorts

 

 

Fellow teachers, I created a set of Word Family Train Sorts to use during Daily 5. If you are looking for word work ideas, stop over at my TPT store to download this file. Students sort word family train cars behind their matching word family train engine. The set includes 59 word families covering all long and short vowels. Students can record their words on the included recording sheet. The trains can also be placed in pocket charts or on a bulletin board for a weekly phonics focus. This set would be a great addition to your Daily 5 lessons, literacy stations, or hands-on tutoring.

Entertainment vs. Informational Texts

We have been studying Author's Purpose through a variety of texts. To assess the students' understanding, they worked in groups to sort pictures of books on a t-chart. The pictures of books came from Scholastic Book Club mail outs. The students could cut out as many books as they wanted to sort.

Attributes of 2D Shapes

As we learned about the attributes of 2D shapes the students worked in cooperative groups to show examples and non-examples of circles, triangles, squares, and square rectangles. When sorting they had to verbally justify how they knew what were examples and what were non-examples by explaining the specific shape's attributes such as how many sides and vertices the shape has. The students then went on "gallery walks" to see how their classmates had sorted their shapes.

Properties and Energy Science Lab

Several weeks ago we visited the science lab to explore physical properties and sources of energy. The students rotated between stations to sort objects by size, shape, color, and texture. They also rotated to stations to explore objects that produce light and sound energy.

Shape Sorting

To help students recognize the unique attributes of 2D shapes, they worked in small groups to sort various shapes in examples and non-examples. Sorting this way helps students justify why they made their sorting choices and teaches them to use content specific vocabulary to defend their choices. For example, as I walked around monitoring the students' sorting, the students would tell me that they knew which were triangles because it had three sides and three vertices and the other shapes (such as diamonds, rectangles, etc.) did not. We continued this process through several shape sorts.

Physical Properties

In science we have been learning about how to sort objects according to their physical properties: size, shape, color, and texture. We visited the science lab to first discuss safety rules and then practiced sorting according to properties. We read the book Officer Buckle and Gloria to help us brainstorm ways to stay safe in the science lab. The students then rotated through stations to sort. Watch the quick slideshow below to see different ways the students sorted their objects. The students used their knowledge to create properties Bubble Maps about various objects.

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