Making words word sorts

• 
• 
• 

© 2023 Prezi Inc.
Terms & Privacy Policy

Word sorts are an engaging phonics activity for K-2 students who are learning how words work while developing word awareness skills. Make sure to download a FREE sample of these differentiated word sorts in this post.

When we first introduce a new phonics skill it is best to keep the instruction explicit, clear, and to the point.  But as I discussed in my last blog post, in order for students to truly master the phonics skills we teach we must provide them with lots of opportunities for review and repetition!   

Even when we know we need to provide this extra practice, it can be a real challenge to keep coming up with activities that are engaging and effective. In his book Phonics from A to Z, Wiley Blevins encourages us to have our students explore and play with letter sounds and suggests word sorts are a great way to do so!  

What are Word Sorts? 

Word sorts require students to think about how words work by drawing their attention to common spelling patterns.  Students are given a set of words that all have something in common and asked to sort them by the common feature.  

There are many types of word sorts but the three most common are: 

Open sorts:  In an open sort, students are not told how to sort the words.  They can sort them anyway they want.  It is smart to start with an open sort because it gives you insight into students’ thinking and what they notice about words.  

Closed sorts:  In a closed sort, students are told how to sort words.  Students visually scan the words for the pattern that you specified.  The most valuable part of a closed sort is the conversation you have after the sort is complete.  Blevins suggests questions like, What do you notice about these words?  What do you notice about these spellings for long-o?  Do you know other words with these spellings?  

Timed sorts:  In a timed sort, students are told how to sort a set of words but given a set amount of time to do so.  A timed sort is a great thing to do with a set of words that students have been working with for a while.  Students love the timed aspect which makes it feel like a game, but it also helps to train their eyes to quickly see larger word chunks which will help them when they encounter new and unfamiliar words. 

Word Sort Routines

The routine for word sorts is simple!  First, introduce the task by naming it and explaining the purpose. 

Next, have students sort the words.  If you’re doing a closed sort you’ll want to model one or two of the words. As students work, you can observe and ask students why they are putting specific words into each category. 

Finally, (and this is the most important one!) you’ll want to check and discuss the sort.  Ask students what they learned about the words from doing the sort and guide them to the aspect that will help them in their future reading and writing!  

Differentiated Word Sorts

Today I’m thrilled to share with you my very own Phonics Word Sort resource! These DIFFERENTIATED activities are both printable and digital so you can use them in the classroom or for distance learning with Google Classroom & Seesaw! 

These word sorts are an engaging phonics activity to compliment your word study routines. There are two levels of word sorts: whole words and words with the missing target spelling pattern to assign to your students. Students will look for common spelling patterns, sort, then communicate what they notice and have learned about the words they’ve sorted.

The resource includes the following Phonics Patterns:

• CVC Words
• Digraphs
• Blends
• Long Vowels
• Diphthongs
• R-Controlled Vowels
• Complex Vowels

All activities in the resource are all based on Wiley Blevins’ recommended scope and sequence for K-2 students.  You can be confident that they are developmentally appropriate and provide the scaffolding students need for mastery.  

Easy to Prep and Manage!

One of the major pitfalls with some word sorts is that they often require a lot of small pieces of paper, letter cuts, or word cards.  They can take a long time to prep, distribute, and collect! 

But NOT these activities! The printable pieces require very few cuts for students. There will be NO TIME wasted dealing with materials!

The digital version has been PRELOADED for you.  With 1 click you add them to your Seesaw library or Google Drive and then you can assign them to your students for remote learning or individual centers!

Another BONUS is that the structure of each word sort in the resource remains the same. This saves you from having to explain and model everytime you assign one!  Once your students have successfully completed one sort, you can be sure they’ll be able to independently work through the rest at whatever pace you assign them! And with 38 different word sorts you’ll have enough to last you the ENTIRE YEAR!  

Download FREE word sorts here: 

I hope the information and the word sorts I’ve shared today will make it easy for you to provide your students with meaningful practice that will allow them to develop their word awareness and master their phonics skills!  

Be on the lookout for my next blog post where I’ll be sharing all about another great activity to help develop word awareness- Word Building Activities!

– SHOP THIS BLOG POST –

–PIN for LATER–

Inside: My 10 favorite word sort activities. Use these in your classroom or for distance learning to build up spelling and phonics skills.

O

n Thursday nights when I was in 2nd grade, my mom turned into a spelling cheerleader.

“B clap, U-R clap, R-I clap -E-D!” she’d chant.

It wasn’t that my mom loved spelling like teachers love a snow day.

But there was a reason she got involved.

I did the typical practice, copy the word a few times, try it from memory, question what in the world is wrong with me when my attempt doesn’t match the narrow paper list… again!

That’s when my mom stepped in with something loud and theatrical to sear the word into my memory (and also to get my perfectionistic butt to bed!)

The question is: why, for a decent reader and writer like me, was it so hard to memorize the words on my spelling list?

The Problem Was This:

In the early 90s the weekly spelling lists were a random collection of words that someone, in some office, somewhere, thought kids needed to know how to spell.

With no rhyme or reason to the word lists, it WAS a tedious effort to memorize those spellings.

But that’s just the way spelling had to be… or was it?

Enter: The word sort

Words in a sort are chosen because they fit in specific categories.

Word sorts work like this:

• Kids learn the sound or rule for each category
• They sort cards with words that each fit into each of the categories
• They practice with the spelling sort in a variety of ways

So the critical question is…

Do Sorting Activities Actually Improve Spelling?

I was excited to learn that researchers find word sort activities improve not only spelling, but also reading skills!

Studies show that students who receive word sort instruction perform better in phonemic segmentation, word identification, and spelling than students who receive traditional spelling instruction.

(Joseph, 2000)

Word sorts help you explicitly teach phonics skills and tap into the power of word families, both research-based strategies for teaching.

You might be thinking: Ok, word sorts improve spelling, but don’t kids get bored with lining up word cards? How do I keep the task fresh so kids stay engaged?

9 Word Sort Activities for Busy Teachers

With simple supplies that you probably already have, you can easily switch up your word study routine to keep it interesting. These tasks work well as part of a daily whole-class word study time, a spelling center, or as homework.

1. Highlight the pattern – When kids notice familiar letter patterns in words, suddenly they go from tediously sounding out “c – a – t” to fluently putting together chunks in bigger words, like “c – au – tion.” Have students use highlighters (and even color-coding) to mark the patterns they find.

Keep in mind: this might be a “sometimes” activity because finding and marking the patterns is beneficial but students could then rely too heavily on color matching instead of pattern recognition when using the word sort repeatedly.

2. Speed Sort – Lots of kids are motivated by competition. Here are my favorite ways to speed sort:

• Students start sorting their words when you say “go.” They stand up when they’re done.
• Students race against a partner to see who can sort faster.
• Students work on their own with a timer and try to improve their time.

3. Sort and Write – Students sort their word cards and then record their work by writing it in a notebook or on a whiteboard.

**Definitely do this one!** Students seem to retain the words much better if they have practiced writing them, not just sorting the pieces.

4. Find My Mistake – Challenge students to solve the puzzle and prove that they can’t be tricked!

• Each student completes their own word sort.
• Then the move a few words into the wrong columns.
• Switch with a partner and see if each student can find the other’s mistakes and fix them.

5. Digital Sort – Take word sorts to Google Classroom, SeeSaw or another digital platform. Set up a background and word boxes yourself or go for a premade set of digital word sorts. This option is great as a word work center in class or as an option for distance learning.

Digital Sorts for Google Classroom

Digital Sorts for Seesaw

6. Sort the Room – Cut apart a word sort and tape the words around the room. Kids write the headings in their notebook. Then they walk around the classroom and write the words in the correct column as they find them.

Worried about finding the time to cut and tape up the words? Make it a special job that a student or two can help out with.

7. Rhyme and Write – Students draw out a card from their word sort. They write the word and see how many other rhyming words they can come up with. This way they are generalizing the spelling pattern to more words.

8. Quiz a Partner – Students work in pairs. Both write the sorting categories on their paper. One partner pulls a word card and reads it. The other partner tries to spell it in the correct column. They check the word together. Then they switch roles and continue.

9. Use in a Sentence – To push students to the next level of understanding, challenge them to use words from their sort in the context of a sentence.

10. Sort and Glue – Save this one for the last time you want to use each word sort. Kids sort out their word cards and then glue them down either in a notebook or on a piece of paper. The glued sort can be used later for reference during writing and for review.

A Simple Routine for the Win

One of the worst mistakes I made as a new teacher was thinking that kids could be exposed to a skill once and be good to go! Wouldn’t that be nice? That would be like if I could follow my phone’s navigation to get somewhere once and never need to look that place up again….pshh :::shades face with hand:::

Kids need to practice with the same sort a few times.

You don’t want them to get bored with it but you also don’t want to exhaust yourself by reinventing the spelling practice wheel every day or week.

There’s a simple solution: Set up a weekly rotation of word sort activities from the choices above. After a few weeks, change out one of the activities for something new. Repeat all year!

It might look like this:

• Monday – Introduce the spelling sort, kids all sort once
• Tuesday – speed sort
• Wednesday – sort and write
• Thursday – sort and glue
• Friday – spelling test on the sort words

Looking for More Support with Word Sorts?

• Research About Spelling for More Effective Instruction

References:

Joseph, L. (2000). Developing first graders’ phonemic awareness, word identification and spelling: a comparison of two contemporary phonic instructional approaches. Reading Research and Instruction, 39(2), 160-9.

Using Word Sorts to Help Students Recognize Word Patterns

In the book Words Their Way, authors Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, and Johnston explain that humans have a natural interest in finding order, comparing and contrasting, and paying attention to what remains the same despite minor variations. Teachers see this inclination in their students, who are trying to master reading and spelling the English language. 

At many of my Reading Horizons training sessions, teachers ask me how they can get their students to identify how one skill or concept is different from another during structured literacy instruction. (“How can I get my students to understand why ‘fir’ has the ‘er’ sound, but the ‘ir’ in ‘fire’ doesn’t?” “How can I get my students to see the difference between words that follow Phonetic Skill 1 and words that follow Phonetic Skill 3 or 4?”)

My answer is usually the same. Word sorts! Word sorts are activities in which students categorize words according to the words’ features. Sorting makes it easier to see the similarities and differences of words.

Even before being able to read, students can begin sorting. They can sort pictures by beginning sounds, ending sounds, vowel sounds, number of syllables, etc. Students can sort words they already know how to read to increase their understanding of how the English language works and learn how to analyze words that they have never encountered before.

Students can also learn how to spell words that they don’t think they can spell by comparing words through sorts. Knowing how to spell familiar words gives the student reference points for learning how to begin spelling new words. Here are just a few of the sorts that students can experience:

• Sort beginning sounds
• Sort Digraphs from Blends
• Sort long vowels from short vowels
• Sort words with closed syllables from words with open syllables
• Sort words that double the ending consonant before adding –ing with those that do not
• Sort prefixes and suffixes
• Sort base words and root words

Teachers can even combine a sound sort with a letter pattern sort. The list goes on and on.

Following are some helpful guidelines for teachers who want to use word sorts in their classes.

• Start with the simplest of concepts and progress to the more difficult.
• Provide students with some example questions they can ask themselves to perform a sort. Examples might include: “Under which heading or into which pile would I place this word?” “What makes this word different from that word?” “What do all of these different words have in common?”
• Have students contrast at least two and up to four features in their sorts.
• Alternate between sorts that can be done individually or as a whole class. They are great to use as part of students’ workstations or as a class activity to reinforce a new skill.
• Using nonsense words draws the students’ focus on the concept or skill rather than on any particular word they may already know. It expands the idea that different words may have something in common. Noticing those similarities and differences is what makes us better spellers and readers.

Two of my favorite sorts are shown below.

1st Sort:  Sort these 20 nonsense words into the correct column following Reading Horizons Phonetic Skill 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. Five words have been done for you.

1. slaze
2. mo
3. fet
4. gred
5. flamp
6. bo
7. glain
8. pob
9. bleet
10. quast
11. gand
12. cloat
13. crope
14. hab
15. fland
16. fline
17. smeak
18. rike
19. ji
20. daip

2nd Sort:  Sort these long vowel words from these short vowel words. Two words have been done for you.

1. tapping
2. coping
3. hopping
4. rating
5. pinning
6. griping
7. riding
8. moping
9. dotting
10. pining
11. winning
12. mopping
13. tiling
14. scrapping
15. hoping
16. striping
17. taping
18. tilling
19. gripping
20. doting

Learn more about the Reading Horizons phonics reading program.

July 27, 2010

Posted in Materials at 9:21 am by svalter

A lot of great word sorts are found on the CD, and even more are in the resource books (that we will hopefully be getting access to this year), but sometimes you just want to make your own sorts.  If so, here are a couple of ways you can do it . . .

First, if you subscribe to The Mailbox magazine, a blank word card set is one of the extras on the website and you can just type and print in about 30 seconds.  To find this resource, look back at one of the 2009 issues (which are still available).  Under Language Arts, click on “BONUS: Language Arts Helpers” and you will find it there.  Once you’ve located it, you can save a blank copy to your desktop to use anytime.  (I would love to upload it here, but I don’t want to violate copyright laws!)

The second-easiest way to make your own word cards is in Microsoft Excel.  All you have to do is follow these steps:

1. Open a new Excel document.
2.  Type one word into each cell (little box).  I would recommend doing 3-4 across and 5-6 down, depending on how many words you have.
3. Click and hold your mouse and drag it over all the boxes with words in them to highlight them.  Then change the font size to something larger and click to center the words in each cell.
4. At the top of the screen, click the tab that says “Page Layout.”  About 3/4 of the way across the screen you will see a box that says “Gridlines.”  Check the box that says “Print.”  (This puts each word in a nice little box that the kids can cut out.
5. Preview your document to make sure it looks the way you want it to look.
6. Print and send to copy center. 

You can also create a table in Microsoft Word and save it as a template if you are more comfortable using this program.  If you’d like to use this format, here is a blank template I created.

Permalink

A good educator finds strategies and programs that work and implements them in the classroom. A great educator begins with an effective strategy or program and then develops ways to extend the learning even further. Kristin McDaniel, a first-grade teacher in San Juan Capistrano, CA, is one of the great ones. Pleased with the results she was seeing from Read Naturally’s spelling program, Signs for Sounds, Kristin asked herself how she could capitalize on her students’ momentum. Was there a way to reinforce and solidify their understanding of the word patterns and high-frequency words featured in the program?

“I wanted my students to better understand the patterns the sound-out words share, and I wanted them to recognize the difference between these sound-out words and the spell-out (irregular high-frequency) words,” Kristin said.

So, Kristin took the words from each lesson in Signs for Sounds and created word sorts—activities that require students to group words by patterns. Students used “line-leader patterns” to create lists of words with shared patterns. “Students also separated the spell-out words and/or words that did not match one of the line leader patterns into their own column (Out-of-Sort Words), since there is no shared rule or pattern in these words,” Kristin explained.

Students did their word sort work independently after completing a Signs for Sounds lesson. With Kristin’s guidance, the Kindergarten, first-grade, and second-grade teams at her school now use Signs for Sounds along with the word sorts. “All three teams report improvements in word recognition and decoding in guided reading and improvements in spelling while writing,” Kristin said.

Inspired by Kristin’s story, we wanted to make printable word sorts easily available to all of our customers who are using Signs for Sounds 1. The Signs for Sounds Level 1 Word Sorts and the Signs for Sounds Level 2 Word Sorts are available as free downloads on the Read Naturally website.

Students can work on the word sorts as independent work after completing lessons, as Kristin’s class does, or the teacher can direct the word sort activity during small group instruction. Teachers can consider several options when assigning the word sorts: 

1) After the student cuts the words apart and sorts the words below the line-leader patterns in the header, the teacher (or another adult) can check the student’s work. Then the words can be gathered into a plastic zip bag or envelope and used again to sort and review the words the next day.

2) The student can be directed to cut the words apart, sort the words, and then glue the header and each word in the correct column on a second piece of paper. This allows the teacher to check the student’s work at a later time.

3) When checking a student’s work, the teacher can extend this independent work a step further. By directing a student to read the words down each column and across each row, the teacher can confirm that the student is able to read each word within the pattern (reading down), mix the patterns (reading across), and read the “Out-of-Sort Words.”

Here is an example of a Word Sort. Students cut along the dotted lines and then sort the words into their correct column based on the pattern in the header.

Example of a Reproducible Word Sort from Signs for Sounds Level 1 (Lesson 7)

We love when educators like Kristin extend their students’ learning using Read Naturally materials. Thank you, Kristin, for sharing your story and making your word sorts for Signs for Sounds available for other teachers! 

Download Signs for Sounds Level 1 Printable Word Sorts

Download Signs for Sounds Level 2 Printable Word Sorts