Description

Goals of this activity: This hands-on activity is designed to get students thinking about how classification works.  They have to examine some items and see how to create their own classification for the items.  The goals for this activity include:

• Having students learn about the process of classification by creating a classification in a group 

• Helping students learn to determine which characteristics might be useful in classification

• Helping students to realize which traits make it challenging to classify items (like using short or long since these are relative terms)

• Having students realize the importance of working together  

• Having students test their classification by having other students try to complete the same classification and see if the results are the same.

Steps to complete before students begin the activity:

1. Put students in groups of 2 or 3.

2. Pass out a bag of items to be classified.  It helps if each group has the same items, but this is not critical.

3. Pass out of a piece of paper (I prefer cardstock) to each group.

Steps for the students:

1. Empty all items from your bag onto the desk (fig.1)

2. Take some time to look at all the items.

3. Begin to think about how you want to sort the materials to create your classification.

4. Begin the classification by creating a group name for the classification (see fig. 2 Bric A Brac)

5. Next, divide the material into 2 groups and give each group a name (see fig. 2 Non-pointy vs. pointy)

6. Continue this process.  Divide each category into 2 or more groups and give each group a name (see fig. 3 and fig. 4).

7. Have students continue to do this until they are no longer able to divide up the items.

8. Once complete, have students take a picture of the classification that they created making sure to include all the items where they belong (see figure 4 for an example- although this classification could have continued). 

9. Have students trade papers (with no items).

10.  Have the new group try to follow the classification of the first group.

11. Once the new group is done, look at the picture taken by the initial group to see if these items were placed in the same categories in each group.

Conclusions and Discussion: End by talking about the activity.  The topics to address will likely include:

1. The challenge of following another groups’ classification

2. The challenge of deciding how to divide up the materials

3. The challenges of using color or size for classification 

4. How classification is used for living groups

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