Teaching Sorting in FDK

Hi guys!

Today I wanted to share with you my favourite lessons and resources for teaching sorting in Kindergarten!

LESSONS:

First of all here are my plans for sorting:

You can click on the image above to download the plans in PDF for easy printing!

On Day 1, I introduce our learning goal for sorting and define sorting:

Then we practice sorting by colour! I prepare a bag of items and have the students sort them into hoola hoops.

After the lesson I transferred them onto canvas to display as part of our sorting resource wall. I happened to have these canvases lying around but I know canvas is expensive so if you don’t have canvases I would just use cardboard cut to size!

On Day 2, we reviewed the learning goal and then practice sorting by shape.

We sorted the shape buttons as a group and then transferred them onto the canvases again to put on our sorting wall.

On Day 3, we reviewed the learning goal and then practiced sorting by size.

We sorted these pom poms by size and then transferred them onto the canvases again to put on our sorting wall.

On Day 4, we introduced how we can sort in a variety of ways (not just colour, shape and size). We read the book “Sort It Out” by Barbara Mariconda and talked about all the ways Packy (the mouse in the story) sorted his stuff.

On Day 5, we reviewed the learning goal and talked about why we learn to sort and when we use this skill in our life. We talked about how we sort items in our classroom to help us find things easier and how things are sorted in the grocery store to help us find what we want easier too.

At the end of our unit our sorting reference wall looks like this:

When students sort items and can tell me their sorting rule, I take a picture and put it as an example under “I can sort things and say my sorting rule.”

CENTRES:

And here are some of the centres that we put out for the students to explore sorting:

1. SORTING BUTTONS

Student make a sorting rule and sort them into the fruit cup containers.
I add tweezers for extra fine motor practice!

2. SORTING BEADS

I have the students sort the beads by colour.

I add the tongs for extra fine motor practice!

And if they use their finger, the small beads encourages them to use a pincer grip.

3. SORTING POM POMS

Sorting is awesome because you can literally sort anything! I love this bag of pom poms because there are different sizes. This way the kids can sort by size or colour!

4. SORTING LETTERS

I spread my home made tactile letters out around a bin of magnetic letters and encouraged the students to sort by letter. An easy way to integrate literacy and math 🙂

5. SORTING NUMBERS

Then I did the same thing with number magnets!

6. SORTING COUNTING BEARS

When we first start sorting I put these sorting mats out to give those kids that need it more support.

7. SORTING PATTERN BLOCKS

I have these mats as well that asks the students to sort the pattern blocks by shape too!

You can find both mats (and many more) by clicking here.

8. SORTING A VARIETY OF MATERIALS

After the students are familiar with sorting I start to set out multiple materials at a sorting centre and have the kids come up with different ways that they can sort the items!

Here is an example:

SMARTBOARD:

And here are some of my favourite interactive sorting games that you can put on your SMARTBoard!

My kids always love Fuzz Bugs! This game works on sorting by colour and other math skills like 1:1 correspondance and working on math vocabulary like most and least.

This and That Sort It Shop is another great one because it practices sorting by a variety of rules such as short vs. tall or 4 legs vs. 2 legs (as pictured above).

Flo & Zo Sort It Out! has sorting by colour, shape, pattern etc!

iPAD APPS:

Here are also some apps that you can put on your iPad to give students with more practice with sorting at centre time! You can find them all in the App Store!