Concept+Sort


 * Your Name **: Sunya Coleman #4


 * Strategy name**: Concept Sorts


 * Student appropriate grade levels**: Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth


 * Tags**: Prereading strategy, Mathematics, Science, Concept, Prior Knowledge, Vocabulary


 * Content areas**: Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, History


 * Type of Strategy**: Prereading strategy


 * Types of Students**: general students, low achievers, high achievers

I would tailor this strategy to whatever topic I was covering for that particular week. For example, if I were to teach a lesson on exponents, I would relate it to exponential growth in order to give my students some back ground information. Despite exponents being a mathematical term, it relates to the science term: exponential growth. Also, I could teach a lesson on fractions and relate it to scientific notation, so I would create a sheet with words that contain fractions as well as scientific terms that relate to fractions. Relating terms from different content areas will help students to make connections, thus making learning more meaningful. My sheet of words might look like this:
 * Strategy Description**: Concept sort in a pre-reading activity that is meant to be done in groups. It is used to access the prior knowledge of students so that all students start a lesson with the same background information, help students with conceptual understanding and give students a preview on the topics and associated vocabulary that they will be study in each of the disciplines in enduring weeks. The strategy can be adjusted from a more difficult level **(open sort)** to a less difficult level **(close sort)** depending on the level of students. In this strategy, the teacher creates a sheet of words that maybe related to a math, science, social studies, or history concept. Next, she/he passes out a sheet to each group and asks them to cut out the words and arrange the words into groups that make sense to them. After they finish sorting, each group explains how they sorted the words and their reasons for doing so. In a closed sort, the teacher gives students the categories for sorting.
 * Strategy implementation example **:

Then I would ask my students to group the information that I gave them in categories that make sense to them and explain to me why they choose such groupings.
 * **Exponential Growth ** || **0.8 ** || **10^10 ** || **Gigantic ** ||
 * **Eighth ** || **Atoms ** || **Humans ** || **1,000,300 ** ||
 * **Scientists ** || **1 million 300 hundred ** || **Bacteria ** || **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">10000000000 ** ||