How to Use Semantic Sorts for Vocabulary Instruction in Your Content Area

Semantic sorts, sometimes called concept sorts, are activities that involve sorting words by their meaning.  Semantic means “meaning” and sorting is “making groups”.  So that means our students will be grouping words by their meaning. For this activity, students will work in small groups to sort word cards into categories.  

Step 1: Prepare for the Sort

Gather materials needed

You can print word cards using a template.  We have provided you with a template you can easily edit, download, and print as well as instructions for creating digital sorts that can be completed in Google Docs or Google Slides.  Or, you can buy index cards and just write your vocabulary words on each.  Either will work fine.

Selecting vocabulary words

How do you select words for your sort?  First, select what you consider the most important vocabulary for your unit.  Some teachers use the words found in the glossary section of their textbooks.  Also ask yourself, if I wanted my students to write a paper on this unit, what words would I expect them to use?  What words would they need to know to carry on a conversation on this topic?  You may also see what keywords you find in your teaching standards.  Keep in mind that if you are teaching history, you will also include proper nouns such as the names of leaders or the locations of important events.  These are important vocabulary also.  

We also encourage you to create an “Other” card for each set. The Other category will include the words that don’t fit in sorting categories or that students don’t understand well enough to place in categories.  These may be words that are important to the unit but don’t have a place in the categories you or your students select.  I’ll explain how to use the “extra” category in a minute. 

Creating the cards

Put only one word or phrase on each card.  When selecting how many cards to put in one sort,  keep in mind the developmental level of your students.  Younger students may only be able to sort a deck of ten cards. Instead of selecting cards for just one sort, you may want to create a set of cards for each unit.  That means you may have more than 30 cards, but you might select only 10 to 30 for each sort depending on previous lessons.  For kindergarten students, you will want to add pictures to the word cards.  Beyond kindergarten, we recommend adding pictures to the cards.

Step 2: Select the Semantic Sorting Type

Open and closed sorting rules

Once you have your cards created you will decide what kind of sorting you want your students to complete.  You may tell your students to complete a closed sort.  In a closed sort, the teacher tells the students the categories for sorting.   In an open sort, the students create their categories for sorting.  Both are effective and depend on your objective. 

Closed sorting

So let’s start with a closed sort example.  Let’s say I gave students a collection of cards under the topic of landforms. 

Mountains, plateaus, hills, cliffs, valleys, hollows, foothills, islands, peninsulas, marshes,  buttes, canyons, valleys, basins, plains, marshes, mesas, erosion, magma, plates, lava, deserts, delta, silt, currents, wind, rain

In a closed sort, the students are given the categories by the teacher.  The teacher might say, “Please sort these words into landforms and the forces that shape landforms”.  Then students can sort their words accordingly.  Even in this sort where all the cards can be placed in one of the two categories, I might still have the “Other” card available.  I usually tell students if they are not sure about a category, not to guess.  Instead, I tell them to put the word in the “other” category and when I walk around the room, I guide the students through conversation and prompts until they place the card in the correct category. The teacher may also walk around and ask questions about the sorting decisions.  This is a great opportunity to discuss with students misconceptions that lead to incorrect sorting.

Open sorting

Open sorts are more challenging for students.  In an open sort, the students must take all the vocabulary words in the pile and create their categories for sorting. The teacher may limit the number of categories.  Students need to understand that all the words may not fit into their categories, and that’s okay.  That is what the “other” category is for.  The other category is for those words that do not fit in their created categories.  So if we use the same landform words again, and I tell the students they can only have two categories, the students may choose these two categories:

Water and land and land only.  They may want to have one group of vocabulary that describes landforms that depend on water for their definitions, and vocabulary that describes words that do not depend on water in their definitions.  Their sort may look a little like this.

Land only: Mountain, plateau, hill, cliff, 

Water and land: island, peninsula, marshes, delta

Other: erosion, magma, plates, lava, silt, currents, wind, rain, mesa

During the conversation, you may ask the students: why do you have mesa in the “other” category?  This may reveal a misconception of the vocabulary word.  The student may say, “Because mesa is the Spanish word for table.  I’m taking Spanish One now.”  As a teacher, this allows you to affirm their background knowledge of the word mesa, and also connect it to previous knowledge by saying, “Yes, mesa means table and that is where this term comes from.  Mesas have a flat top like a table, and that’s where the name comes from.   In geological terms, mesa does mean table and it is another word for a type of landform.  It’s like a plateau with a flat top, but a mesa must have one steep side and usually stands apart from other landforms.” This discussion both builds on background knowledge and corrects a misconception.

Step 3: Determine When to Use the Sorting Activity    

You can use this activity at the beginning, middle, and end of the unit.  At the beginning of a unit, you can give the students the words for sorting to see if they have previous knowledge of the vocabulary.  I can also expose misconceptions about the meanings of words as well as the concepts that connect these words.  For example, if my students group protection with open trade, I can ask students to discuss why they grouped these words.  If a student replies it is a guess, we can move away from assuming this is a misconception.  If the student explains the conceptual decision, as a teacher, you can record this as a misconception.   

At the end of the unit, you can tell students to complete an open sort on all the words from the unit.   Remember to give students an “extra” category for words that don’t fit in every category they create. That will prevent students from forcing a word into a category or abandoning a category that will deepen their understanding.   Let’s use the same vocabulary words for an open sort.  One of my student groups might come up with the following categories: