Keys in Burlington

Categorizing
Margie Johnson
Memorial
Grade 3

I have been working with third grade students on KTL strategies for a few months now. They have had numerous opportunities to categorize, starting with everyday, familiar vocabulary such as sorting appropriate vs. inappropriate behaviors in reading class which we used as a review of the class behaviors they had generated, as well as types of food, basic vocabulary to review nouns, verbs and adjectives, and so on.

Students have also had experience using top-down webs to organize their ideas for writing a paragraph, and have also been guided through generating details for scaffolded 2-column notes on short stories and Newsela articles.

One of the core books for third graders is Helen Keller. This book is a challenge for this group of students, so using KTL strategies was certainly helpful. First, we did an adjectives word sort to describe Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller. We read the the words to them and discussed their meaning. Then, students worked with a partner to sort the words. The discussions that evolved around this word sort led to a much deeper understanding of the characters particularly since several words could have applied to each of the characters for different reasons. Students were able to support their reasons with examples from the test.







After reading a chapter, students worked with a partner to sort sentences from two paragraphs which told about two different events in the text then wrote the main idea of each paragraph.



Most students were able to write what the paragraphs were about but some needed more discussion...a work in progress.