Word Sorts

For their speaking class, my students are sometimes innundated with groups of words with the same root (like art and artist; writer and writing in this unit). Consequently, they sometimes have trouble coming up with the appropriate form of the root word when speaking. That's where this activity comes in!

I have an arsenal of laminated cards that I write on with permanent marker which, PROTIP!, can be removed with nail polish remover! (This was a pretty exciting discovery for me a few months back, since I had previously been using dry erase markers that never completely went away.) A vocabulary word goes on each card, and the cards are distributed to the kids along with some sticky-tacky (surprisingly not available in Korea). Then I put a PowerPoint slide on the board with three or four different category shapes, each with one word inside. It's up to the students to work independently (or together, if they need to) to put their cards in the correct shape on the board.

They're encouraged to read the words out loud and to look for clues in spelling, affixes, and capitalization.



Here they've stepped back and found a problem that they're trying to fix. :)

When they're done with the cards, they sit back down and we work as a class to come up with possible titles for each of the categories, which helps them further understand how certain ideas are connected.


At the end, they fill in a story in their books with blanks (shaped similarly to the shapes on the board). They can choose the direction of their story based on the linked words that they use (Art, artist, painting; P.E., runner, running).